In the course of her first year at St Hilary’s Sophie ran away twice. On neither occasion did she get any further than the station of the small village near which the school was situated. The headmistress, Miss Salisbury – an unusually enlightened woman who showed, in the opinion of many of the more conservative members of staff, more understanding and tolerance than Sophie deserved – did everything that was reasonably within her power to help the child to settle, but to no avail. Sophie, caught between the world she knew and one that she considered neither knew nor cared about her, and in which she felt a stranger, was unhappily – and predictably – badly behaved. Whilst the world beyond the high walls that bounded the school grounds stirred and trembled with a groundswell of revolutionary change as the unrest of the working classes built towards bitter industrial strife and women besieged Parliament and engaged in pitched battles with a police force whose avowed intention was to break the women’s movement once and for all, Sophie suffered helpless homesickness and a largely self-inflicted loneliness. She was popular neither with her fellow pupils, who found her arrogant and difficult to get to know, nor with most of the staff, to whom she showed an even worse face. St Hilary’s was a school for the solidly middle-class – Sophie’s first shock came when her father told her firmly that in his application to the school he had described the Red Lion as an hotel, and that, like it or not, that fabrication would have to stand. It was unfortunate, too, that she arrived as a new pupil in a class of a dozen or so girls whose friendships and loyalties were particularly well formed and cemented. Not that there were not, at first, those to make overtures to the tall, interesting-looking girl whose ability on the games field put her into the first team for netball and for hockey within a month of her joining the school. But Sophie would have none of what she quite mistakenly construed as their patronage, and unsurprisingly they soon left her to her own devices. So, during that first year she was more miserable than she had ever imagined it possible to be, which simply aggravated an already difficult situation.
The summer of 1911, however, brought some relief – the long school vacation, most of which was spent, at Josef’s suggestion, at Bissetts with him. Louisa and Boris were only too thankful to accept, happy to keep the girls away from the events that were stirring in London. It was a stifling summer, and the city sweltered in heat and tension. In Parliament a constitutional crisis involving the curtailing of the power of the House of Lords caused chaos for the government. In the country at large industrial unrest was seething – seamen, dockers, miners, transport workers, all were bitterly dissatisfied, and resentment and discontent were building to explosion point. During that uncomfortably warm June, the month that the new King, George the Fifth, was at last crowned, there were strikes, riots and fire-raising all over the country. A month later, however, these domestic troubles were for a time at least overshadowed for two tense weeks by an outside threat as a Germany that was pursuing ruthlessly a policy of expansion confronted France in Morocco. Off the coast of Norway, uncomfortably well-placed for a sudden strike across the North Sea, the German Fleet steamed, an overt threat to British security. David Lloyd-George, speaking at the Mansion House, asserted publicly that if Britain felt her interests anywhere in the world to be threatened, she would fight. An outraged Germany growled, and Europe teetered on the edge of conflict. In the bar of the Red Lion, however, the credibility of this threat soon crumbled beneath the weight of more immediate issues. What was the Navy for if not to defend our shores? Leave it to them. More pressing was the need – some were now saying the right – of every working man to a living wage and security for his family, for improved conditions in the docks and in the mines. One by one they went on strike: the miners, the dockers, the transport workers. There was rioting in Liverpool, in Manchester and in London and the troops were called out. By the middle of August, with the threat of war thankfully receding, the whole of industrial England’s railway system was paralysed. London itself had been brought almost to a complete standstill and was like an armed camp, with soldiers patrolling the streets and camped in the parks.
Safe at Bissetts, however, Josef and the girls were little affected by the disturbances. They learned what little they knew from newspapers and from Louisa’s letters, and buried there in the tranquil peace of the rural Essex countryside it all seemed far, far away. Sophie lived that long summer day by day, grateful for the peace and pleasure of the place in which she found herself, refusing to look back or ahead, spending the warm days in exploring the countryside, reading beneath the tall old trees, dreaming by the side of ‘her’ little pool. With youth’s almost unique ability to live purely for the present, she dismissed the thought of the coming year and lived for the moment. The big house itself was empty, apart from a small staff – Alex was working in the city and living in the London house, Alice and the boys were summering in Italy. Mrs Brown, the Roses’ cook, took great pleasure in exercising all of her considerable culinary talent upon feeding the occupants of the cottage. At least – as she confided to Mrs Lawson, the housekeeper – her good offices were much and openly appreciated by old Mr Anatov and his two young guests, which was more than could be said with regard to some others she could mention—
In the valleys the miners were starved back to work: but the dockers won their battle and put new heart into Trades Unionists all over the country.
Sophie Anatov lay dreaming upon the summer grass and ignored the rest of the world.
The rest of the world, however, flatly refused to be ignored forever. Time, that intractable enemy that cannot be defeated, moved inexorably on and inevitably the day came for her to return to school.
Louisa arrived from Plaistow a couple of days before she was due to leave, with her school trunk, it being felt that a trip all the way to London and back would be a tiring waste of time for the child. And then, despite Sophie’s best efforts to pretend that it would not happen, the moment finally came when she and her mother stood upon the platform of the tiny country station, the labelled trunk at her feet, and looked for words to say goodbye.
“I’ve hardly seen anything of you,” Louisa said.
“No.”
“But – you did understand? About staying at Bissetts? It’s been awful in London. It was so much better that you should be here.”
“Of course. And we didn’t mind. We enjoyed it – apart from not seeing you and Papa of course—”
In the distance a small plume of smoke reached a vapour-like finger above the massed green of the treetops.
Louisa took her daughter’s hand. “Sophie – please? Try to be happy. It’ll be better this year, you’ll see. You know the place, and the people—”
“Yes.”
“Papa had a very nice letter from Miss Salisbury. She’s very concerned about you. And she hopes that you’ll settle this year.”
Sophie said nothing. They could hear the train now, distantly and cheerily puffing up the incline towards the station. The rails hummed. People on the platform began to collect together coats and baggage.
Louisa struggled on. “And next year – with any luck – Maria will be joining you. She’s so looking forward to it.”
“I’m sure she’ll enjoy it,” Sophie said, with truth. There seemed to be, somewhere lodged in the pit of her stomach, a cold stone, chill and heavy.
Her mother clasped her suddenly to her. The child was already a good two inches taller than she. “You’ll be fourteen soon. Quite grown up.”
“Yes.” Sophie stepped back from her, smiling woodenly.
“I’ll send you a cake. To share with your friends.”
“Thanks.” The brief word was all but lost in the busy clatter of the train’s arrival. It sighed steam and was still. Sophie climbed into a carriage, banged the door and let the window down, leaning out to watch as her mother saw to the safe stowing of her trunk in the guard’s van. Louisa came to the carriage window, reached an anxious hand and lifted her face for a last kiss. The engine let out an imperious shriek and the train began to pull away. Louisa moved with it, still holding her daughter’s hand. “You’ll be all right?”
“Of course.” Sophie managed a too-bright smile. She let go of her mother’s hand as the train gathered speed and, clamping her shapeless uniform hat on to her mane of blonde hair, hung from the window watching as the small figure who stood upon the platform, hand upheld, diminished to doll-size and finally disappeared as the train swayed around a bend.
Sophie sat back into a seat, bolt upright, and stared ahead, bleakly, into space.
A woman sitting opposite her smiled companionably. “Going back to school?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have far to travel?”
“No.”
The woman appeared not to notice the unmannerly brusqueness of the replies, nor the suspicious brightness in the girl’s eyes. She fluttered a gloved hand. “How much I envy you modern girls! My own daughter simply adores her school – she’ll be Head Girl next year, I do believe. How very different from my own childhood – only the boys were lucky enough to go away to school in those days, my dear. So see how lucky you are—”
Sophie, very deliberately, turned her head away and stared stonily out of the window.
The third time that Sophie ran away from school her plans were better laid and she made it all the way to that person and place that to her personified refuge, Uncle Josef and Bissetts. It was a wild and wet winter’s night in the December that followed that sultry, violent summer that Sophie, victim of yet another clash with authority in which she had inevitably come off worst, climbed from her dormitory window, scaled the school wall and set off to walk not to that station that was closest to the school and where she had been so easily apprehended twice before, but across country to the next stop down the line. It was a cold and frightening journey, and a child of less obstinate courage would have given up long before her destination was reached. Sophie, however, chilled, tired and more than a little frightened, had set it grimly in her mind that this time she would reach Bissetts. Surely – surely – Uncle Josef would stand up for her? He wouldn’t let them send her back? Uncle Josef was getting old. He needed someone to look after him. Why shouldn’t they live there, at the cottage, just the two of them? She wouldn’t give up. She wouldn’t.
The woebegone figure that turned up at last in the sheltered porch of the cottage that night, was however, far from an heroic one. The long dark walk from the station had leeched the last defiant self-confidence from her; she had never felt so much an outcast as when she had plodded, drenched as a drowning cat, past the secured windows and doors of the cottages along the road, never been so grateful for the sight of that familiar, studded door. Even the unexpected sight of her Aunt Anna’s face, sleepy and questioning, at the open door did not surprise her enough to overcome the enormous relief at having at last come to warmth and safety.
“What the – Sophie! For Heaven’s sake! What are you doing here? Lord – you’re soaked! Absolutely soaked! And shivering – come in. Here, let me help you—” Anna, pulling her dressing robe about her against the cold air that streamed into the house from the open door, stopped suddenly as the implications of her niece’s unexpected appearance filtered through to her sleep-clogged brain. “Oh, Sophie,” she said.
Sophie was crying. She had lost her hat in the scramble over the wall, and her hair was sodden rats’ tails, water-dark and bedraggled. Her heavy woollen coat had simply soaked up the rain, and hung heavily, chill and unpleasant-smelling. Her feet were wet. She was, as Anna saw, shaking like a leaf, from cold and misery. Her skin was pallid, blue-tinged.
“Come along.” Anna was suddenly brisk. “Get those wet things off before you catch your death. I’ll get the eiderdown from my bed. It’ll be warm and dry at least. And Sophie – be quiet, dear, please. Papa – Uncle Josef – hasn’t been at all well. Oh, don’t worry,” she added as the young, woebegone face turned to her in fresh alarm, “it isn’t serious, and he’s much better. But he has been rather unwell and it’s best his sleep isn’t disturbed.” She bent to poke the dying fire briskly. Small flames licked around an unburnt log and the flare of it lit the familiar, homely room briefly. “Hurry – you’re drenched. We can’t have you catching pneumonia—”
Sophie silently climbed out of her sodden clothes and accepted the eiderdown her aunt offered. She curled into an armchair in front of the fire, her long legs folded beneath her. Anna took the wet clothes into the kitchen, where the range at this time of year was always kept burning, and came back a short while later with a steaming cup and a handkerchief. Sophie accepted both with muttered thanks, and blew her nose resoundingly.
“Well,” Anna said, pensively, “here’s a to-do.”
Sophie ducked her head. She had stopped crying. Her mouth was stubborn.
The silence lengthened.
“Are we going to sit here like this all night?” Anna asked at last, mildly tart. “Or are you – eventually – going to say something?”
Sophie lifted her head. The young, strong bones shone in the fire-light. “I’m sorry.”
Anna considered. Then, gently, she shook her head. “Not good enough. We’re going to have to do better than that. But first—” she stood up “—we must get a message through to the school. They must be worried sick about you. Papa doesn’t have a telephone here, so I’ll have to walk up to the house. Don’t move—” she lifted a firm finger “—you hear me? Don’t move until I get back.”
“But – Aunt Anna – it’s awful out there – you’ll get drenched.”
Her aunt surveyed her, not unkindly. “My dear child – it’s a little late – isn’t it – to be considering the welfare and convenience of others?”
Sophie had no answer to so obvious a truth.
“Just stay where you are. We won’t be long. And then – we’ll see what’s to be done about all this.”
Several hours later Anna surveyed her niece’s blotched, unhappy face with exasperated affection and sighed. The built-up fire flared and flickered between them; the buffeting of wind and rain against the window reinforced the air of cosy privacy that had encouraged intimacy and confidences. For hours – and for the first time in her life – Sophie had poured out her troubles with honesty, into a more or less sympathetic ear. Now she sat, still huddled into her eiderdown, nose and eyes reddened by emotional weeping, but much calmer. Anna remembered – oh, how well she remembered – the age, and the sense of confusion that went with it. She remembered too a child younger than this one who had run away and had been comforted.
Joss.
The thought of him, as always, intruded suddenly and disturbingly into her mind, like a rock that breaks the water of a smooth, fast-running stream.
Sophie sniffed disconsolately.
Anna smiled. “Could you drink another cup of cocoa?”
“Yes, please. If it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Of course not. I won’t be long.” Anna picked up the cups and went back into the kitchen. Although all their meals came from the big house, Mrs Lawson always made sure that the larder was well stocked with snacks and beverages. She put a small saucepan of milk upon the range, reached for the cake tin. Then she stood for a moment, a hand to her tired eyes, her mind distracted from her niece’s predicament to her own – to the enigma of her relationship with the man who was her husband.
For what seemed now to have been a long time – after Nicolai, and the near-ruin of her father – she had believed herself to hate him. That cold-blooded insistence that she bear him a son had exacerbated that emotion and had driven the wedge deeper between them. And yet – always it seemed she found herself using those words about Joss – and yet the fact remained that he had not discarded her as he might have when he had discovered her to be carrying another man’s child. Neither had he, as he might have done, made her life a purgatory of penance and penitence. On the contrary, after Ben had been born she had been left to live her own life in a way that she knew to be the envy of a lot of women.
She straightened. Ran her hand through her hair. Opened the cake tin and reached for a small plate.
Then why was she not satisfied? Why – despite the freedom that he afforded her to live her own successful life, despite her insistence to herself that his attentions, physical or otherwise, would be entirely unwelcome, did she perversely find herself lately more than ever resenting that cool emotionally barren relationship that at first she had welcomed? Resenting his absences. His secrecy. His women.
She arranged some of Mrs Brown’s small, appetizing-looking cakes carefully upon the plate.
There. She had admitted it. For the first time. She smiled wryly to herself. It must be a night for honesty. Poor, miserable little Sophie had bared her soul. It must be catching.
She nibbled at a cake, hardly tasting it.
And now, again, as she had known it would, her mind was teasing at the puzzle of that odd occurrence last week. Why could she not forget it? It wasn’t, after all, as if anything had actually happened. Was that it? Was it that the odd, disturbingly dissatisfied feeling that recollection of the incident invariably brought was something close to disappointment? She stood, still and cold, and tried to force herself to honesty.
It had been the night before she had heard of Josef’s illness and had come to the cottage to nurse him. Joss, as he usually did, had come home late, long after the rest of the household had retired for the night. The sound of the cab in the street had awakened her. She had heard the shutting of the front door, and then his light step on the stairs, had registered the slightest hesitancy in his tread that had suggested to her that at least one of his companions this evening had been a vodka bottle. She had lain in the darkness, listening, seeing in her mind’s eye the slight, austerely handsome figure, a little dishevelled, as he climbed the stairs and made his way to his own rooms at the other end of the house. Then it had for a moment seemed that her heart had ceased beating; his footsteps had turned not away from her door but towards it, and then had stopped. A moment later a chink of light had appeared, a needle of lamplight that had pierced the darkness and then widened to a shadowed shaft as he had pushed the door silently open and entered the room. With no conscious thought she had closed her eyes, with an effort kept her breathing even. Yet surely – surely – he must have heard the pounding of her heart? The light of the shaded lamp he held had glowed rosily through her closed lids. He had stood in silence over her for a full minute, that to Anna might have been an hour. And then, neither touching her nor speaking, he had turned and left the room, closing the door very quietly and leaving behind him the faint aromas of his night; the smell of spirits, of cigar smoke and a slight, cloyingly sweet perfume that lingered like poison in the air above her bed.
She had not slept well that night, and had been ashamed of her dreams.
“Damn!” The word was vicious and aimed not exclusively at the milk that was boiling and sizzling on the hot plate. She retrieved the saucepan hastily, held it, dripping, over the sink until its seething had stopped, then with what was left made a full cup of cocoa for Sophie and half a cup for herself.
Settled back in the cosy little sitting room, she pushed her own troubles to the back of her mind and regarded the girl with pensive, questioning eyes.
Sophie fidgeted for a moment under her regard, and then asked abruptly, “Aunt Anna – what am I going to do?”
“I think,” Anna said quietly, “that that’s rather up to you. Don’t you?”
“I s’pose so.” The words were glum. “But, Aunt Anna, I don’t know where to start. I’m never going to fit in – I can’t.”
“Nonsense.” Anna leaned forward, “Sophie – darling – listen to me. First; no one ever solved a problem by running away from it. I think you know that in your heart of hearts already. Second; if you’ve spent all this time thinking about yourself and you’ve come to no constructive conclusions, then why not try looking at things from a different angle? Why not try thinking about someone apart from yourself for a change?” Though the words were a little harsh, the tone was gentle. Sophie was watching her intently. Anna searched tiredly for the words that might help the child. “You seem to think that your parents have sent you away and abandoned you – that they don’t understand, that you’re alone in all this. You know as well as I do that that simply isn’t true. Your parents want to do what they see as best for you; not necessarily for now, this minute – but for the rest of your life. They see things that you don’t. They know things that you don’t. And if they have made mistakes – and personally I don’t believe they have – it’s only in their eagerness to help you. You’re a lovely girl, lively and intelligent,” she stopped the girl’s self-conscious words of protest with a wave of her hand, “of course you are. And times are changing, thank heaven. There will be a place for girls like you in tomorrow’s world, please God; that’s what people like Arabella are fighting for. But if you’re going to take advantage of that you have to acquire a decent education. You surely don’t want to work at the bar of the Red Lion all your life?”
The girl lifted a quick, mutinously defensive head. “If it’s good enough for Papa—”
“But it isn’t. Is it?” Anna asked quietly. “We both know it. We all know it. Your father knows it himself. It’s his stiff-necked pride, his total inability to back down once he’s embarked on a course of action—” She broke off for a moment, a sudden thoughtfulness in her eyes. Then continued, “You of all people should understand. You’re like it yourself. I’m coming to believe it’s an Anatov trait. Your father doesn’t belong in Plaistow running the Red Lion. He should be working in the business with Joss—”
“He won’t do that.”
“I know he won’t. And I think it perfectly ridiculous. But I understand to a certain degree and I know there’s no use in arguing with him. But I also know that he’ll break himself to ensure that you and Maria don’t suffer because of his obstinacy. He knows the difficult position he’s putting you in – but he’s trusting to your courage, your good sense, that you’ll make the best of it – of what he’s trying to do for you. And then how do you repay him?”
Sophie was silent.
“They deserve better of you.” Anna’s voice was still gentle.
“But – it’s all so difficult! So – so stupid! Why must I lie about what Papa does? I’m not ashamed of it—”
“And neither should you be.”
“And why should I bother with people I don’t like—” the girl hesitated, then added, honestly and desolately “—or rather with people that don’t like me?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, child!” her aunt scolded. “Don’t like you? How on earth would you know? How much chance have you given them to like you? If you snub people – show no interest in their friendship – how hard can you expect them to try? You don’t get anything for nothing; you have to work at this the same as anything else. No one’s going to go on bended knee and beg, ‘Sophie Anatov, please be my friend’! You have to show people that you want them. You have to fit in with the society in which you’re living. You have to compromise—”
Sophie shook her head. “You don’t do that.”
Anna stared at her. “My dear Sophie! Of course I do! More than most if you really think about it. I just do it in my own way. And that’s what you have to learn to do. To use not only your own talents, but those of the people around you, the support of the group you’re living with. Sophie – you have to stop fighting the world. You can’t win. You’ll never win, not the way you’re going about it. And it isn’t fair – to yourself, to your parents, or to Maria. She’s joining you at school next year, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s an aim for you. When Maria joins you, let her be proud of her big sister. Don’t make yourself a liability to her. You have to change your attitude. To try – to be happy, to fit in, not to judge people so harshly. You have to soften a little. Don’t be so stiff-necked. So ready to be hurt. Learn to bend a little with the wind. Dead wood breaks, the willow does not—” Once again she had that strange feeling that had assailed her earlier on – that she was talking not only to Sophie, but to another, more obdurate ear.
There was a long, thoughtful silence. Then Sophie, completely calm now, turned her head to look at Anna. “Is that truly what you do? Bend with the wind? Compromise?”
“Of course.” Anna brought her attention back to the child. “But then I believe that we all do, whether we recognize it or not.”
“But you’re so different! So individual! You’re the last person I’d think of as—” Sophie shrugged “—as following the herd.”
Anna shook her head sharply. “I said nothing about following the herd. That isn’t what I’m talking about at all. I said you don’t have to take on the herd single-handed.” She leaned back. The wind had died a little and the room was quiet. “When I discovered that the world expects its women – quite unreasonably – to be physically attractive, regardless of how bright, or talented or intelligent they might be – I didn’t make myself uglier in an attempt to show the world that I didn’t care for its ways. I did care. I cared a lot. So – I did something about it? Do you think any the less of me for it?”
“Of course not.”
“Then – can’t you see that the same applies to you? Except that you haven’t thought it through. You are – at present – making yourself ‘uglier’ – not physically, but in your attitude and character. And yet there are so many people who are ready to help you, if you’ll let them. The headmistress of your school, when I spoke to her this evening, sounded charming, and was obviously very concerned about you. Fortunately, by the way, she hadn’t had a chance to contact your mother and father, so at least they’ve been spared a night of worry.”
Sophie ducked her head.
There was a short silence. “My dear,” Anna said at last, “I think you know – you’re beginning to see – how very silly you’ve been.”
“Yes.”
“And – are you going to do something about it? It won’t be easy.”
“I’ll try.” The young passionate face was touchingly determined. “I promise I’ll try. I’ll remember everything you’ve said tonight. No one’s ever really talked to me about it all before.”
Anna half-smiled. “And whose fault might that be do you think?”
“Mine. I never asked anyone. Never knew how to ask.” Sophie paused, then added, “I don’t think I knew that I wanted to ask.”
“Well,” Anna was brisk, “it’s all agreed, then. A new start. Now, you’d better get off to bed. There isn’t much of the night left and I promised I’d get you back to the school first thing in the morning.”
For the first time the enormity of her crime seemed to strike Sophie. “Was – was Miss Salisbury very angry?”
“Of course she was. And worried too. You won’t get off scot free—”
Sophie pulled a face.
“—but I promise I’ll do my best for you. I’ll have a word with her. Tell her that we’ve talked. That things are going to be better now.”
Tiredly Sophie got to her feet. “Thank you.” She bent to kiss her aunt’s cheek. “Thank you for everything. Good night.”
“Good night, my dear. And Sophie—”
Sophie, at the door, turned.
“Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t.”
“And if you ever need help – someone to talk to – I’ll always be there, if it helps.”
“It does,” the girl said, softly. “Thank you. Good night.”
Anna sat for a moment, listening to the girl’s footsteps as she slowly climbed the creaking stairs. The fire was dying. She leaned forward, chin on hands, to the last of the warmth. “I never asked anyone,” Sophie had said, “I never knew how to ask—” and strangely the words had twisted in her like physical pain.
The fire tumbled at last to ash. Anna gathered her gown about her against the chill, and went to bed.
Sophie surprised herself with the determination that grew and blossomed from that night. Never one to do anything by halves, grimly at first but then with gathering confidence, success and enjoyment she set about directing that headstrong energy that had been turned until now largely to rebellion and mischief into more positive channels. She learned – not without difficulty – to curb her temper and her tongue, at least for most of the time, learned too to be more tolerant in her reaction to her own and others’ failings. By the time Maria joined the school in 1912 it was to find herself the sister of something of a school heroine on the sports field – hadn’t she scored that famous last-minute goal against the High School and saved the day? – and a girl who, if still not everyone’s favourite, at least and at last was the centre of a small circle of loyal friends. If, still, she sometimes led those friends into mischief it was of a different order than before. There was, Miss Salisbury observed with truth, a world of difference between slightly anarchic high spirits and miserable and bitter rebellion.
That year, that Sophie and her friends spent playing cricket and tennis, and studying Shakespeare and Wordsworth, saw the further deepening of the country’s industrial troubles and the launching by the Suffragettes of a militant campaign of violence. In March, Sophie learned from a letter from Anna that Arabella had been arrested on a window-breaking expedition to London’s West End and, refusing – as all Suffragettes on principle refused – to pay her fine, had been sent to prison for a month, where she had promptly gone on hunger strike. “I do fear for her,” Anna had written, “truly I do. Constitutionally she is not strong, and if half the awful stories one hears of forcible feeding are true, then I shudder to think what she might be going through. But – while Mr Asquith and Mr Lloyd George refuse to honour their promises then Arabella and her friends will keep fighting. To the death, if need be, I fear – though sometimes I wonder, disloyally perhaps, if their actions are not actually working against their aims—”
Arabella was released from prison two weeks later, weak from her ordeal, but still very much alive, and with a spirit far from broken. She did not share her friend’s misgivings. A month later she was on her feet and breaking windows again.
That summer was again a summer of strikes, with the London docks totally paralysed from May to August and the mood of the working classes alarmingly militant, so once again the Anatov girls spent the summer at Bissetts. Josef no longer lived alone, but on Anna’s insistence was looked after by a middle-aged widow named Emmeline Saunders who spoiled him like a child whilst pretending to rule him with a rod of iron. Both Sophie and the placid Maria got on well with her, and for her part Mrs Saunders was always sorry to see the youngsters go.
The following year a new threat was added to those already besetting the British Government; the real possibility of civil war in Ireland. Perhaps it was this, added to the roar of its people demanding industrial and electoral reform that deafened the ears of the country to the growing, deadly murmurs across the English Channel in Europe. The year of 1914 dawned still in domestic chaos.
Sophie Anatov was in her seventeenth year. Still headstrong, often thoughtless, she had, happily, at last developed her father’s capacity for laughter, and the way ahead looked clear and good.