Old Baggage

‘I MENTIONED IN my letter that I would need an assistant,’ said Mattie to the elderly gentleman who opened the door for her at Ipswich Masonic Hall, an east wind elbowing between them. The cabbie who had driven Mattie from the station helped her to carry in the boxes of glass slides.

The hall itself was almost equally draughty, the canvas screen that hung at the back of the stage bellying like a sail. A lectern stood at the front, and a magic lantern was already in place on a table halfway down the aisle; Mattie arranged the boxes beside it.

‘Yes, my great-nephew Roley will be helping you,’ said Mr Wilkes, his eyes watery behind pince-nez. ‘He’s an intelligent boy.’

‘It’s simply a matter of agreeing on a prearranged signal.’ It was the first time she had given a lecture without the aid of The Flea, and she had spent the previous evening whittling down the number of slides so that, instead of the usual six boxes, she need only bring three with her. It had been a complicated and time-consuming exercise, during the course of which, when reaching for a pencil, she had managed to knock two of the glass plates from the desk, and on standing to inspect the damage had inadvertently stepped on another. As ill luck would have it, all had been photographs of the great processions, and it had taken a prolonged search through the cupboards in the lumber room to unearth The Flea’s box of ‘spares’, one of which appeared to show the Coronation March. She had been enraged by her own clumsiness – at one point in the evening, she had stood on the stairs and shouted, ‘Damn and blast!’ so loudly that her throat was still aching.

No one, obviously, had opened the drawing-room door to enquire tartly what might be the matter.

He was, perhaps, seventeen, shaped like a yardstick – tall but very narrow, his feet the widest part of him – and his expression was that of an Inca sacrifice awaiting slaughter.

‘Very good. Each of these boxes is numbered, as you can see. I shan’t be progressing through them in order, so we need to work out a system of signals. I see there’s a small bell on the lectern – I can ring it once for Box 1 and twice for Box 2, but to avoid the impression of campanology, I think we should come up with an alternative for Box 3. How would it do if I rapped my knuckles on the lectern instead? And when I give the signal, you must load the next slide from the requisite box and then listen for my verbal cue to actually change it – I shall say, “Slide, please.” Does that seem reasonable?’

‘Of course. One bell, Box 1; two bells, Box 2; knuckles, Box 3; and then I’ll say, “slide, please” – would you like to write it down? I’m certain you’ll do a fine job – oh, Mr Wilkes, before I forget, a friend of mine is coming this evening. Could I reserve a seat for her? Her name is Mrs Procter.’

It wasn’t until she was waiting in the wings for the lecture to start that Mattie realized that she had forgotten to bring her sash. Absent, too, was her usual sense of eager tension, that feeling of a runner poised for the pistol; she could hear the audience and yet it seemed to stir nothing within her, beyond the thought that on the whole she would rather be spending the evening in front of the fire with a book. She felt unsprung; unleavened.

‘… fortunate today,’ Mr Wilkes was saying, ‘in having a very experienced speaker, Miss Simpson, here to tell us about her … er … experiences. Which I’m sure will be most interesting. Before I forget, after Colonel Duncan’s talk on Sarawak last week, a black umbrella was found under a seat, and if anyone …’

There was a pause, presumably for Mr Wilkes to ensure that any remaining trace of anticipation had been sluiced from the room, and then Mattie was introduced once more, this time as Miss Timpson, and came on to the stage to a smattering of applause.

‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘My name is Matilda Simpkin. I hope, over the next hour or so, to convey something of the history and methods of the militant suffragette movement …’

The lectern lamp was very bright, and she could see little beyond it. Roberta, she knew, was sitting beside the aisle in the fourth row, and Mattie addressed her opening remarks in that direction, flicking the little bell that dangled from the reading light.

‘Slide, please,’ said Mattie. ‘Mary Somerville. Mother of six, self-taught scientist, jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society. The Oxford college for women is named after her.’

She glanced over her shoulder at the screen, and was reassured to see the expected image: the pleasantly ovine face of a genius. ‘I myself studied at that college, although Oxford University did not, and still does not, see fit to award its undergraduettes with a degree, despite exam results which have often exceeded those of the male students.’

‘It is indeed a shame,’ said Mattie, nodding towards her fellow Somervillian. ‘And illustrates a familiar pattern in the struggle of the female for both civil and legal equality, viz: it is not enough for us to match the intellectual and organizational accomplishments of men – it is not even enough for us to outstrip them. Whatever our achievements, we are expected to wait, like patient Griselda, on the whim of those in power.’ She tapped the bell. ‘Now here is another cloistered member of our sex – one to whom three successive Viceroys of India came for advice. Slide please.’

As Florence Nightingale replaced Mary Somerville, Mattie glanced at the notebook that lay open on the lectern. Usually, she would talk extempore, but on this occasion it was clearly expedient that she stick to an order, and the thought of this marked path, from which she must not stray, made the hour ahead seem like a forced march. She was conscious that her speech was less fluent than normal, its content more pedestrian, the audience no more than politely attentive.

‘Any questions?’ she asked, after the introduction. ‘Before we move on to the birth of the WSPU.’

‘Fire away,’ said Mattie, shading her eyes in an attempt to see the questioner.

‘Finished?’ Mattie checked her wristwatch. ‘I rather doubt it, given that I’ve only just started and it’s already seven forty-five.’

‘Oh dear. Only I told Maria that I would be back by ten past eight. I must have got the time wrong. I don’t know what to do now.’ There was a sigh.

‘No, I think I should go, or Maria will worry. Excuse me, I’m most awfully sorry, could I just get past?’ Inevitably, the speaker was at the centre of a row.

‘That rather reminds me,’ said Mattie, raising her voice in an attempt to cover the shuffles, apologies and exclamations, ‘of the story of the cook Maria, which was sometimes used to illustrate the masculine attitude towards women’s talents. “Maria,” said her master, “you are a most excellent cook but I can no longer afford to—”’

‘So where were we?’ asked Mattie, slightly rattled, checking her notebook and then flicking the bell twice. ‘Yes, 1903, and Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, together with Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence – slide, please – met in Manchester, in order to …’ There was an odd rustle of laughter. Mattie twisted round to look at the screen and saw three suffragettes dressed as nuns.

‘Ah. They met in disguise, obviously,’ she said, attempting to salvage the moment. ‘No, clearly I’ve given the wrong signal to our magic-lantern operator.’ She rapped her knuckles on the lectern. ‘So, as I say, Mrs Pankhurst and the Pethwick Lawrences – slide, please.’

‘Yes. No. I’m so sorry, I’m not being clear. When I give a knock, it’s Box 3.’ Mattie demonstrated the signal once again.

There were fumbling noises beside the magic lantern, and the squeak of a hinge. Mattie turned back to look at the screen just as the nuns were replaced by a photograph of a poster parade: a long line of suffragettes walking along a road in single file, each wearing a sandwich board that advertised a public meeting. The picture was unfamiliar to her – it was, she realized, the slide she’d found the day before, and which she’d assumed (after briefly raising it to the blueish bulb in the lumber room) showed a march.

‘No, that’s still not the – oh!’ Mattie stopped and stared. A poster parader had merely been an ambulant hoarding, instructed not to engage with the public and to ignore derision or laughter. But the first woman in the line was looking directly at the camera and smiling, her skirts a blur as she strode forward. She was strikingly handsome, dark-eyed, alight with energy; alive with it. Venetia Campbell.

Distantly, a door slammed and a gust of wind swept through the hall, strong enough to set the screen swinging violently. Mattie shot out a hand to steady the lectern, and the bell jingled; there was a panicked movement from behind the magic lantern, followed by a gasp and a monstrously loud crash. Mattie closed her eyes.

‘Are you comfortable?’ asked Roberta, raising her voice above the engine. The constant vibration made her sound as if she were gargling.

‘Not particularly,’ said Mattie. ‘This seat would seem shaped for someone with a single buttock.’

‘Yes, Edward says the same, but I love this little motor-car – Veronica tells me I have four children – her, Crispin, Roger and the Austin – and that I’m fondest of the Austin. And I couldn’t manage without it – you know I’m a prison visitor at Norwich? There’s no other way to get there apart from a motor-bus that takes hours.’

‘I’m far too stout these days, they’d never fit me into a cell … I’ve forgotten, did you ever drive?’

‘In Serbia. Ambulances. Though one didn’t so much drive as wrestle; it took two hands to change gear while one steered with one’s knees.’ She looked over her shoulder at the boxes, wedged in the gap between the seats.

‘I’ll go very slowly,’ said Roberta. ‘We don’t want to break anything else. Oh, that poor boy, though, I thought he would die of mortification – you were very restrained, I must say.’

‘Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse,’ said Mattie. ‘Casse being the operative word in this case.’ Twelve slides had been broken. ‘Frankly, short of felling him with an upper cut and then setting fire to the hall, I really could think of no adequate response. And in any case, I must shoulder my share of the blame. I confused the boy.’

The Austin turned a corner and the headlights caught a fox in the lane ahead, its eyes like silver buttons.

‘I may as well tell you,’ said Mattie, ‘that I haven’t spoken to Florrie since July.’

‘What?’ Roberta actually turned to look at her, mouth open, before snapping her gaze back to the road. ‘What do you mean? You’ve not talked to each other in four months?’

‘But – no, hang on, we’re nearly back home, I can’t drive and think about this at the same time. This lane is all pot-holes.’

Frowning, she fixed her gaze on the untarred track, and Mattie looked out of her window at the overgrown hedgerow, though the darkness had stripped it of all texture; they might have been passing a cement wall topped with spikes. A visit to Roberta had always been a treat – a house full of pets and jolly children, a river where one could fish, long walks and rooks roosting in the stubble, and gentle, kindly Edward, a classicist who handled books as if they were made of gold leaf, and played chess like a devil. But now there was a conversation to be had. A headache dropped behind her eyes, like someone lowering a heavy crate.

Roberta turned off the road and eased the car to a halt. Lights were on in the windows of the large, square house, and a lamp in the porch threw a pale semicircle across the gravel. Above the ticking of the engine, Mattie could hear the river.

‘Tell me in here,’ said Roberta. ‘Otherwise we’ll have to fight to find a quiet space. Tell me why The Flea has gone, and where she’s gone and why you’re not speaking.’ Roberta, for all her artistic bent, had a lawyer’s brain.

‘But you said in your letter that she wasn’t coming to the lecture because she was ill. Mattie, you never lie.’ Roberta was looking aghast, her round face hatched by shadow, the effect almost cubist in the half-light. ‘So what was the disagreement? Surely you’ve had a thousand disagreements before – neither of you has ever fought shy of having an opinion.’

The dark booth of the motor-car was somewhat reminiscent of a confessional, with its lure of absolution. Best out with it, thought Mattie; best admit the whole, ghastly chain of events. Roberta listened carefully, with the odd painful interjection.

‘Well, he was always something of a lecher – yes, he was, Mattie, there’s no need to flinch. He stroked my bottom once, in Hyde Park, when I was already engaged to Edward, and I wasn’t the only one, far from it. Anyway, go on.’

A lecher. The word seemed to stay in the air, reverberating thinly beneath the narrative. The car grew chilly. There was an odd dislocation to seeing one’s breath whilst talking about a day of exceptional heat.

‘A rather bald description. “Day of Sports marred by accusations of Unsporting Behaviour”. I received five letters of complaint from parents.’ And on the following Sunday, and the three after that, she had waited on Parliament Hill at the usual time, but no girls had arrived. Each week, the summer had retreated a little further, the leaves dulling, the baked grass regaining its colour in the rain. Once, she had seen Freda and her white dog in the distance, but neither had come any nearer, though Mattie had waved.

‘Merely one stating that she would send a carrier for her trunk. He came a day or two later.’

‘Florrie wrote to Alice Channing to say that she would rather not see any of her old friends for a while, and charged her to tell me.’

‘Good God, Mattie, you’re like Rapunzel in the tower. What on earth have you been doing with yourself?’

It was difficult to give a precise answer, to define the hiatus that had begun with the serial removal of every normal activity. First had come the cancellation of her weekly column in the Ham & High (‘the Editor regrets that, following the recent events …’) and then – after three weeks of dropped-jam-jar-induced limping, her big toe resembling an illustration of a bletted plum – came the diagnosis of a fracture, with the injunction from the doctor that if she didn’t rest with her bandaged foot on a stool, like some gouty dowager, she would be forever impaired.

As autumn splashed and loured outside, she had sat in the drawing room in a state of ghastly impotence, unable, in her usual manner, to stride away from introspection; stewing in it, in fact, like a dumpling in mutton soup. She had let the Amazons down, she had hitched her wagon to an ersatz star, she had ignored the obvious, she had embraced the unlikely, she had chosen speculation and ignored truth, she had gilded the past and pawned the present. She had rewarded loyalty with blows; she had accepted ammunition from the enemy; she had chosen a missile which might wound, and had flung it, deliberately, into the face of a friend. She had embraced pride and made a sad fool of herself, at the expense of others.

And then, since one could only self-flagellate so many times before numbness set in, she had sat and read: all her favourites, Sterne and Fuller, Boswell and Eliot, the crystal labyrinth of Browne and Dickens’ foggy alleyways, Montaigne and Surtees, and Somerville and Ross. She had finished one book and picked up another. The house had grown dusty and she had eaten bread and cheese for nearly every meal, and apples from the back garden, before the first hard frost had blackened them. And when she could once more manage without a stick, she had begun to walk a little further each day, and walking, as ever, had uncoiled her thoughts, so that she could follow them again – each a guideline rather than a noose.

‘I have, I suppose, been listening to the metaphorical voice of the magistrate.’

Roberta gave a cluck of amusement. ‘Well, that would make a change – you were certainly splendid at ignoring the real ones. Do you remember King’s Thursday? – fourteen of us in the dock, one after another, brought in and then removed for misbehaviour? Genevieve tried to climb over the rails and I think Aileen threw a boot at the constable and I kept shouting, “Shame! Shame!” until they dragged me out again, but you managed the entire catechism, I think – “I believe in Votes for Women on the same terms as men, I believe in … in …”’

‘“ … in the policy of the Women’s Social and Political Union. I believe in the equality of the sexes, Representation for Taxation, the necessity for militant tactics and Freedom Everlasting!”’ How clean, how simple, the aims had been – an arrow, straight and true; one fight, one victory. How muddy, by comparison, the present.

‘So what’s to be done?’ asked Roberta. ‘I presume that part of the reason Florrie was upset was because you implied that her friendship was unnatural, though why on earth you would listen to the insinuations of Jacqueline Fletcher I have no idea, when Florrie’s worth fifty of her. And in any case, aren’t Sapphists allowed friendships, too? Just think of Ethel Smyth and Mrs Pankhurst. Besides – oh!’ she added, startled, as a tall shape loomed at the side window of the Austin.

‘Good evening, ladies,’ said Edward, bowing like a butler. ‘I gather that a conference is in progress, so I have brought refreshments.’ Two glasses of punch steamed briskly on a tray.

‘Oh, you are thoughtful,’ said Roberta, opening the window. ‘Are the children in bed?’

‘No. They never listen to me and, besides, they want to stay up in order to see Mattie.’

‘He’s a dear man,’ said Mattie. There was a liberal measure of brandy in the punch.

‘He is,’ said Roberta, rather sombrely. ‘I know that I’ve been fearfully lucky to have Edward and the children – and of course I have brothers that I love, just as you did, but I still think that there was never a family as close to me and as true as the one I had with my sisters in the cause.’ With her free hand, she reached out and squeezed Mattie’s arm. ‘And all families have their disagreements.’

‘I am under no illusion as to the amount of damage that I have wrought. I must try to make amends.’ But she felt ready, now – as if visiting Roberta were a stirrup-cup, rallying her for the journey. ‘Do you remember the lyrics of “March of the Women”?’ she asked. ‘“Life, strife. These two are one.”’

‘“Nought can ye win but by faith and daring,”’ capped Roberta, smartly. ‘Shall we go in?’

Miss F. Lee

c/o Public Health Department

Pancras Road, NW1

November 20th, 1928

Dear Florrie,

After living like an anchorite for much of the last few months, I have now exited my cell, free, I think, of the peculiar obsession that gripped me over the summer. During our last exchange I spoke to you in anger, after a day – after an entire season – ruined by my own folly. I am profoundly sorry. You have been the most loyal and perceptive of friends, and I was a clod not to recognize the wisdom of your words. The past, I have realized, should not be revisited; one is but a spectator there, stamping one’s feet in impotent anguish. Better, always and ever, to raise one’s eyes to the road ahead. I hope you will forgive me, Florrie. As you correctly pointed out, I can be an awful fool.

By way of a handshake, I would like to offer you a parcel of domestic news, though little of it is cheering, and most of it reflects badly on myself.

Having neglected the garden to the extent that I feared that one day soon I would open the back door only to be felled by a poison dart from a tribe of pygmy head-hunters, I have now set to with pruning-hook and hoe, and last week built a splendid bonfire; so splendid, in fact, that Major Lumb threatened to telephone the London Fire Brigade. It occurred to me that learning to transmit smoke signals would have been an excellent activity for the Amazons – we could have had two fires separated by the brow of a hill, and a vaporific conversation; however, this cannot be; a flourishing meadow has been scythed and ploughed, and in its place grow rows of turnips – by which I mean that, due entirely to my actions, the Amazons is no more, while the League appears to have doubled in size, so that one can hear their profoundly dissonant rendition of ‘Salute We the Flag’ from as far away as Parliament Hill. More of this, later.

Besides the garden, you may be astonished to hear that I have – at last – cleared the attic, discovering several items dating back to suffragette days, and even earlier, judging by the patent bustle that I found in a trunk. One might wish that there was a Museum of Obsolescence to which it could be donated, so that future schoolgirls could marvel at the idea of attempting to run and jump with what appears to be a giant tea-strainer buckled to one’s rear end. The saleable items I donated to a bazaar to raise money for the Six Point League and, having been recruited (by Alice Channing) to run a bric-a-brac stall, I am delighted to inform you that I sold every item thereon, including three bundles of stair rods and a Tyrolean walking stick of unsurpassed ugliness.

To further prove that I have not been entirely inert, I have visited an exhibition of Brancusi sculptures (covetable), attended a lecture given by Maud Hepplewhite of the National Spinsters’ Pension Association (overlong) and attempted to make apple jelly using your own recipe. Should you need a strong and pungent adhesive, I have fourteen jars of the stuff.

To return to news of the Empire Youth League: I’m afraid, Florrie, that I have twice glimpsed Ida marching among their ranks; were a vengeful God to choose my punishment, He could scarcely have come up with an improvement. Like yourself, Ida has left the Mousehole, sending me her notice in a letter (incidentally, she writes clearly and well). I’m sure she has no wish to see me, but, equally, I feel that I should apologize to her in person, not to mention handing across the week’s wage that she is still, after all this time, owed. I don’t suppose, Florrie, that you could drop me a line with Ida’s address? I remember you mentioning that she lived with an aunt.

If I don’t hear from you I shall visit the continuation school on the Euston Road and try to find her there. I shall send her your best wishes; your kindness to her has been unfaltering.

In friendship,

Mattie

‘Ida Pearse,’ repeated Mattie. In the room next door to the secretary’s office, a class was chanting French verbs, and the secretary herself had a head cold, her strained wisp of a voice scarcely audible beneath the bellowed declension of être.

‘If our pupils change jobs, their new employers often refuse to give them leave to take time off, and we really have no—’

An electric bell shrilled and the secretary sat back with a sigh, indicating with a wave of her handkerchief that, for the time being, further speech would be impossible.

Mattie turned to watch the stream of young people passing the open door, and then stepped to one side as three girls entered.

‘Miss Hopkins, Monsewer Bernard isn’t feeling well,’ said one of them. ‘He says he’s sorry but he’s not going to be able to take the three o’clock class.’

‘Goodness, I hope not,’ said Miss Hopkins. ‘Perhaps he’s just caught my cold. Oh, Olive,’ she added, as the girls turned to leave. ‘Don’t you know Ida Pearse?’

Olive had a great bush of hair, anchored with a grid of pins. ‘Yes,’ she said, cautiously.

Olive shifted her gaze, and her eyes widened. ‘Oh!’ she said, and her mouth contracted into a smirk.

‘Miss Simpkin,’ said Mattie, extending a hand. ‘I gather that you recognize me.’

‘Then I surmise that you’re in the Empire Youth League, with Ida. I would very much like to speak to her.’

‘I haven’t seen her for a fortnight – or three weeks, maybe. She got ill when we were on parade.’

‘Top floor of Alma Buildings in Wilson Road. My cousin lives just downstairs and he says Ida’s aunt’s a right old … not very nice,’ she amended.

‘You mean she’s une vraie vipère?’ asked Mattie. ‘It’s the French equivalent for “a right old cow” – literally, “a true snake”. Though I suspect Monsieur Bernard hasn’t taught you that.’

‘Are you fluent, Miss Simpkin?’ asked Miss Hopkins. ‘Only we’re always on the look-out for fresh blood …’

Ida’s aunt had given her a bundle of plain lawn squares, which, when hemmed and embroidered, could be re-sold as handkerchiefs for a shilling each. Ida was working on a moss-stitch rose, concentrating every speck of her attention on the task because that way she could avoid having to think about anything else. She kept forgetting to blink, so that her eyes felt roasted.

‘Drink your tea,’ said Aunt Lilias. ‘And you needn’t make it so perfect, it’s not worth your time for what people will pay for them. If you cross-stitch a double border, that’s enough.’

‘It’ll be the tally-man …’ said her aunt, rising, but it wasn’t. The sound of Miss Simpkin’s voice rose above the blare of a passing train, and Ida started up, the handkerchief dropping to the floor.

‘You can just turn right round and go away again,’ said her aunt. The view to the door was blocked by a drying rack, and Ida edged forward until she could see between the pillow cases. She could tell from the angle of her aunt’s back that Miss Simpkin would be coming no nearer than the outside landing, and from the tone of her aunt’s voice that there would be no interrupting her, no wedging of justifications between the hammered sentences – every word had been waiting, primed for use.

‘No, she doesn’t want to see you, and for two pins I’d chase you down the road. Miss Lee said you’d stick with Ida. She said, “Mrs Beck, I can promise you that Miss Simpkin’s a sticker,” but you didn’t stick, did you? You didn’t stick and you let Ida down, you got her hopes up and then turned your back on her and gave a leg-up to someone that didn’t need it, someone who has it all on a plate, and then afterwards nothing – you didn’t come here then, did you, not a word of apology, you might as well have slapped her down, and I hold you, Miss Simpkin, I hold you responsible – you should be ashamed of yourself, with all your talk of everyone together and all’s fair, and telling the girls that the Empire lot were bad when Mrs Cellini’s been ten times the help you have, ten times. If it wasn’t for Mrs Cellini …’

‘… So don’t go thinking you’ll get round her now,’ said her aunt, violently changing tack, her tone relentless. ‘It’ll take a hayload more than “sorry”. No,’ she continued, over a comment from Mattie, ‘she’s not ill, who told you she was ill? There’s nothing wrong with her. No, she’s helping me, she doesn’t have time for running about, she’s got to make her own way, just like I had to make my own way, the world’s not moved on an inch, all those new women in the magazines, it’s all lies, it’s all nonsense, it’s – what’s in that? Is that her wages? About time. Yes, I’ll give it to her, and you can go now.’

Ida’s aunt stood, breathing heavily, an envelope balled in her hand. ‘Don’t, Ida,’ she said, not looking round. ‘Don’t cry. You won’t get anywhere by crying.’

‘I’m not.’ Though she was. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and then her aunt was back by her side, taking one of the handkerchiefs that Ida had embroidered – a tumble of pastel flowers on one corner – and pressing it into her hand.

‘And it’s a pretty thing. Almost good enough for you.’ Her aunt gave Ida’s hand a swift pat – half admonition, half affection – and went back to her ironing.

Dear Florrie,

I have spent the day with Mr Arnold, who came this morning to clean out the gutters. Since he arrived with the same ladder as last year (do you remember? It has a distinct starboard slant) and no boy accompanying him (Reginald has had enough of working outside in all weathers, and is now on the glove counter at Debenhams, much to his father’s disgust), I felt obliged to act as anchor, and was therefore unable to escape a two-hour monologue on the history of the British Monarchy, of which Arnold senior appears to be chief archivist. In case you didn’t know, Florrie, the Regency Act of 1830 made provision for a change in the line of succession had a child been born to William IV after his death, a fact that I shall doubtless mull over during the long winter evenings.

All of which lengthy preamble is merely a way of delaying having to tell you that I did not manage to speak to Ida. Her aunt, a tigress of rare stripe, sent me on my way with a clawed ear, and I barely glimpsed her niece amongst the washing.

After giving some thought as to what course I should take, on Tuesday I visited Pomeroy at his office. I have settled money on Ida, to enable her to continue her education, should she wish; Pomeroy will deal with all correspondence, since I think it would be expedient to keep myself at a remove. I have also given him a letter for Ida, which I hope she will be generous enough to read.

An unexpected and tangential result of the above events has meant that I can now introduce myself to you as Mademoiselle Simpkin, as I am styled for my weekly French lesson at the Euston Road Continuation School. I am also teaching English, and have chosen to begin with Macbeth, given the ample opportunity it provides for re-enacting scenes of gore and violence – I have never before taught boys, but this has always proved a fruitful approach with the gentler sex.

You would like my pupils, Florrie; they are raw and loud and eager. The answers they gave to my question ‘Describe Lady Macbeth in a single sentence’ might not be acceptable in an examination – or, indeed, in polite society – but nevertheless strike truly at the heart of the matter.

I am writing to you from the drawing room, and among the cards and invitations on the mantelpiece is one from Roberta, asking you to The Beeches for Christmas. I hope you will accept it. Or, if not, I hope that your current lodgings will provide you with congenial company. I have an errand or two to run, and shall therefore remain at the Mousehole for the festive season, should anyone wish to drop by. I have been making sloe gin, as evidenced by the indelible stains on my fingers. Out, damned spot …

In friendship,

Mattie

Fifty-three, Ailsbury Gardens had a pokerwork sign on the gatepost which read ‘Beware of the Children’, and an obviously home-made holly wreath drooping asymmetrically from the door knocker; the pleasantly informal impression was deepened by a distant woofing that became rapidly louder and nearer the second Mattie lifted her finger from the doorbell.

‘Get in there,’ said a female voice. ‘Get in!’ There was the scuffle of toenails on tile, and then an inner door slammed, muffling the barking. Shortly afterwards, the front door opened to reveal a parlour maid, apron askew, her breath somewhat short.

‘Yes.’ Mattie took the square, well-padded parcel out of her bag. ‘Could you please tell her that it’s fragile, and to unwrap it very carefully?’

The maid took the package with requisite care, and Mattie had just turned to go when there was an exclamation from within the house and a Jack Russell shot up the passage and halted at her feet, yipping insistently, teeth bared, eyes boggling with hatred.

‘What are you doing, little chap?’ asked Mattie, bending to scratch the dog’s head. It instantly stopped barking and writhed on the doormat, belly uppermost. The maid stooped for its collar and dragged it back up the hall.

‘Sorry,’ said the man again. ‘Paddy thinks everyone’s a burglar. You’re not hurt, are you?’

‘Oh,’ he said again, shoving his hands into his pockets like a schoolboy, and then straight away removing them, as if he’d just been reminded of his manners; he was in his late forties, with sandy hair in a tonsure and a mild, anxious face. ‘Do come in,’ he added.

‘But if you have the time. I’d actually been intending to … now you’re here …’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but opened the door more widely, and Mattie managed a nod. It was not an interview she would have sought, but it was one that it would be cowardice to avoid.

In the study, Campbell cleared a flotilla of paper boats from a chair, and gestured for Mattie to sit.

‘My wife’s taken the children to see a pantomime – the three youngest, that is; the other two are in the house somewhere … too old for Mother Goose. Should I ring for some tea?’

‘Not on my account, thank you.’ Glancing at the books on the nearest shelf, she adjusted her eye-glasses and peered more closely. There were seven copies of the same volume.

‘A dendrologist, specifically. Though my youngest thinks I’m a woodcutter, like Hansel and Gretel’s father.’

‘I had no idea. I thought …’ What had she thought? That Venetia’s husband, who had insisted that she left the WSPU, who had kept her in seclusion, must be a thoughtless brute, a blank-faced gaoler? Campbell shifted in his chair, and removed something from beneath one buttock.

‘French militia,’ he said, inspecting the lead soldier, before placing it on the desk and looking at Mattie. ‘I … um … wanted to thank you,’ he said.

‘For your efforts with Inez. Who doesn’t usually take kindly to outdoor activities. Or any activities at all, it has to be said, beyond visiting Regent Street. But you managed to get her camping and lighting fires. And throwing a javelin.’

‘Ralph, too, for that matter. He’s a tremendous stickler. Martinet. Chief whip in the making, Jenny says.’

There was a pause. ‘That’s my wife. My second wife,’ he added. ‘Jenny.’

He stopped speaking again, and rubbed his forehead, as if wiping the smears from a window; in the silence, Paddy could be heard, sniffing at the door.

‘Of course, neither of them really knew their mother and we’ve never told them the whole truth; it seemed too brutal. When Venetia was in the asylum for the first time—’

Mattie wasn’t aware that she’d spoken or moved, but Campbell glanced at her. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘She had, um … it was quite a specific condition. Postpartum psychosis. It began just a day or two after Ralph was born. Venetia kept trying to hide from us, she was terrified, she told the nurse she’d been kidnapped, she couldn’t remember having had a child – it all happened within hours – the speed of it was …’ He shook his head, lips pinched at the memory. ‘She was in the asylum for weeks and weeks and then she started to come back to her old self again. I suppose you would have first met her a year or so after that – my own mother was a keen suffragist. She took Venetia to a meeting and there was a speaker there from the WSPU. It was like lighting a match, she said. Like setting off a firework.’

He picked up the lead soldier again, and idly, perhaps unconsciously, scraped its tiny bayonet along the desk top.

‘She had splendour,’ said Mattie. ‘I recently came across a magic-lantern slide that I hadn’t seen before – it shows Venetia striding along like a Valkyrie. I brought it with me, as a gift for Inez.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be pleased,’ said Campbell, but he sounded distracted. ‘There’s actually another reason why I wanted to see you—’ He stood up, abruptly, and went over to the window. There was no view; merely the sidewall of the next house, the bricks purplish in the early twilight, but he stood looking out at it, the back of his head towards Mattie, hands once again plunged into his pockets.

‘We were … um … we were told that Venetia should never have another child, which, of course, we accepted. So when she … it was … we both knew that Inez wasn’t mine. And then, just a day after the birth, the same thing happened, exactly the same thing, the terror and the confusion – only my mother was unwell by then and couldn’t help with the children, and it was the war and there were factory jobs, no one wanted to be a nursemaid. And then one day in the asylum someone left Venetia’s room unlocked and she found her way to a medicines cupboard. It was … well, you can imagine. Much later on, months later, I found a letter hidden in one of her shoes, in this house. From …’

‘Yes.’ He swung back to look at her, relief flooding his face. ‘Jenny was right – she was certain you knew. So when did you find out that you had a niece?’

‘I had no idea that Inez existed until she came to see me. And then I guessed.’

‘Yes. You know – you do know that my brother was mortally wounded very early in the war?’

Campbell nodded, soberly. ‘I can’t pretend that I wasn’t thrown when I found out who was running Inez’s club. But Jenny said, “Let’s just see what happens,” and you showed such … patience. And perseverance. And I gather from Ralph that it was your efforts to encourage Inez that led to the, er …’

‘So now you no longer have the chance to see her’ – he took a short breath, a nip of air to brace himself – ‘we’ve discussed this, Jenny and I, and we agree that if you wanted to visit us occasionally – as an acquaintance – a family friend …?’

It took Mattie a moment to absorb the astonishing generosity of the offer, and in that disorientating second she had the sense of staring at a weather house, at one figure swinging back into the shadows while another came into the light, and it was Angus, her dear Angus, who was disappearing from view, and Campbell, shining with decency, who emerged.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I would like that. Although perhaps Inez would not.’

‘To be honest, we find it terribly hard to know what would please Inez. Harrods. She’s very keen on Harrods. But she’s still young, and we love her dearly and we hold out hope that, with time, there may be a change …’

‘My mother used to quote that,’ he said. ‘A sentiment true of all of us, I’d like to think.’

It was windless outside, the air hazed with chimney smoke and Venus like a rusty pin above the rooftops. Mattie paused beside the streetlight and pulled on her gloves. She could still hear Paddy barking behind the closed door of number 53, and she glanced back at the house. On the first floor, in the uncurtained bay window, stood Inez. She was holding something up to the glass – a snowflake, cut from tissue paper, delicate and lacy – and she was speaking to someone over her shoulder; her hair had been bobbed since the summer, and she looked painfully young. After a moment or two Leo Campbell appeared, holding a glue pot and brush. Carefully, he anointed the snowflake and then feinted a dab at Inez’s nose; her shriek was audible even through the glass.

Mattie, smiling, continued down the road, and turned on to Highgate Hill, taking her torch from her bag as she reached the shuttered tea-stall at the entrance to the Heath. The Mousehole was due west, no more than a mile and a half as the owl flew, and it was dry underfoot, so that she was able to leave the gravelled path and take the slowly climbing track towards Parliament Hill. The Heath lay like a vast blanket dropped over the lit streets. Just visible to her left was the pale sombrero of the bandstand roof; beyond that lay the stretch of grass where the Sports Day displays had taken place, and the copse where Jacko had said of The Flea, ‘How well she looks after you.’

She knew now how she should have answered. Instead of bridling at the implication, instead of feeling obscurely patronized, she should have replied, ‘Yes, and how lucky I am.’

The dense shadow ahead of her separated into the trunks of a grove of beeches. I shan’t visit Inez, thought Mattie, with sudden certainty – or I shall visit only once, in thanks, and then never again. She is loved and cherished and I am not needed there – nor, in all honesty, wanted. And besides, she thought, as her torch beam slid through fallen leaves, besides, I have a close, true family of my own.