—

Once Emily Hewetson had talked with the languid Mrs Moth – for whose condition she felt much pity; had observed Esther’s mature figure, dress and demeanour; and had met the mannerly and attentive Jack Moth, she thought that there was not the slightest harm in Otis and Esther going about Southsea in one another’s company.

It was, of course, Jack who had the most influence on her decision. If there was one thing, besides his physique, that the son had inherited from the father, it was charm. It was well-known in New Scotland Yard that if one wanted to extract information from a reluctant female witness, then Inspector Moth was the man to do it. He had charmed a confession from many thieves and at least one murderess. He had charmed the Hon. Anne Clermont from the bosom of her family. Add to the charm, the smile, the thickly-fringed eyes in a well-boned face and the full, sensuous mouth, and you began to see how it was that both father and son were attractive to women. And, as women themselves sensed, were attracted by women.

He had gone into the garden whilst his mother and Emily Hewetson were being gracious to one another, and paid homage to Mrs Hewetson’s good looks and striking figure with his eyes.

Nineteen years old, thought Mrs Hewetson, and he has the manner of an experienced man. ‘You must take great comfort in having such a fine son to care for you,’ she said, accepting his homage.

She’s not half bad, thought Jack Moth, momentarily forsaking Victoria Ormorod in mind. You’d never believe she could have a daughter of almost seventeen.

Later, after dinner at The Grand when Otis had gone to her room, Emily Hewetson suggested to her husband that there would be no harm in the two girls spending time together, particularly as in any case they were bound to come across one another in such a small town as Southsea, and that he must agree that any other behaviour would be outré.

‘Mrs Moth wondered whether you would be willing to consult with her on a legal matter. She said that it was only minor, and that she would understand if you would prefer not to whilst you are on holiday.’

‘I trust you put her mind at rest on that score, Em.’ Knowing that she had already offered him to Mrs Moth.

She smiled at having won her husband this small prize. ‘I said that I was quite sure that it would be no trouble to you at all.’

He gave her what almost approached a wink. ‘No trouble having a Clermont on the Hewetson, Batt books.’

‘You won’t charge a fee, Martin?’

‘Now, Em. You’re off again… sprats to catch mackerel, eh?’

‘If it is a small matter, and you do have the time. And…’ She smiled archly across the top of her sparkling wine-glass. ‘She mentioned that her son and daughter are to spend a week or two in Lyme Regis with an uncle of hers during the period of her lying-in.’

She sipped her wine, obviously teasing with a tidbit of gossip. He played along, puffing a little on his cigar, twirling it between his lips, his eyes half closed. ‘And?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, except that Mrs Moth’s uncle is Sir Norbert Clermont of Mere Meldrum.’

‘Is that a fact?’ He topped up her glass and his own.

Watching the rise and fall of her vastly exposed bosom, he wondered, as he always did, how it was that she managed to stop it spilling over and thus giving the world at large a view of those wonderful fruits. And noting the fat-cat satisfaction in her expression, he knew well that later on he would discover that the pink flush he now observed creeping slowly down from her cheek and neck would have painted and warmed her breasts, puckered her rose-buds and sharpened her fingernails.

If there were too many nights for his liking when she would not accept him willingly, those nights of the pink breasts were magnificent. There was no knowing when those nights would be, it was part of the mystery of that side of their life. He could give her anything, forgive her anything, do anything for her in the knowledge that she could unaccountably reach a pitch of desire when she would rake his spine with her fingernails. He knew also that an occasion such as this was the best time for persuading her to his way of thinking – better far than laying down the law.

‘And?’ He crooked a finger at her, beckoning her words.

‘And, Mrs Moth suggested that Otis might like to visit with them.’

A small frown puckered his brow. ‘Ah. D’you think that’d be the thing? I mean, it’s never been clear in my mind what those three were doing out in that dinghy. Why didn’t they hire a boatman?’

‘Let us not go over all that again. That was ages ago. Since this afternoon I am quite clear in my mind that it was merely a foolish, childish escapade. The boy wanted to practise diving, and in their innocence the girls saw no harm in wanting to do likewise. Of course, the boy should have known better, but I believe that his only crime was want of good manners in the presence of the girls. After all, it is perfectly obvious that Otis has come to no harm, and she saw no more than I had seen of my own brothers at that age.’

Martin Hewetson did have to admit to himself that that familiarity had not been a disadvantage: Em had not been overwhelmed at the sight of the male body on their wedding night as other young brides he had heard tell of had been.

‘Well, Em, I bow to your superior judgement. If they invite her, let her go.’

Emily Hewetson accepted another refill of her glass. She felt at her best. She knew that she looked her best. Young Jack Moth’s eyes had traversed her figure and injected her with a feeling of youthfulness she had not felt in ages.

Now, chinking his brandy glass against hers, Martin Hewetson, the opportunity having presented itself, judged his time exactly right. ‘I expect you want a bundle of money from me then. We can’t have Emily Hewetson’s daughter without the correct wardrobe for visiting country estates, can we? Buy her the very best, the prettiest, the latest fashion, buy her hats and get her hair done. No one will ever believe that she could be your daughter: you are bound to be taken as sisters. In that print and those tammies, they know that she’s your little girl, but with lace and pretty boots, your sister.’

‘Now then, Martin, a little flattery is always welcome, but don’t drown the oyster in sauce.’

He saw that his judgement had not failed him. He had hit the right note at the appropriate moment and managed what he had waited months to do, to get Em to take Otis out of those ridiculous girlish clothes.

‘Are you ready, my dear? I thought I would get some Madeira and sponge fingers sent up.’ This time he really did wink. It was a joke from their wedding night that meant nothing to anyone but themselves.

She nodded, smiling. ‘That would be very nice, Martin.’ She looked at him from beneath her lids. ‘You know how I do love Madeira and sponge fingers.’

Madeira and sponge fingers for afterwards… after young Jack Moth had felt the rake of sharp fingernails down his spine.

Emily Hewetson went gracefully up the grand staircase, aware of the tingling that her exquisite new corset caused to her warm breasts.

THE ROCK GARDENS – SOUTHSEA.

Aunt Kate, As promised, a coloured picture. This must be quite an old view, as the trees are now much more grown. Yes, the accomm. is gd. Yes, I am takg some time off. No, I am not wrkg too hard. I shall write a long letter after Tues. Hope to hv. time to visit home on my way up country, Vicky

Victoria Ormorod was kept extremely busy during the next few days. This was the first time that her work had brought her to the joint towns of Portsmouth and Southsea. Although Portsmouth – with its railway, factories, crammed back streets, and busy shops, noisy market, and Royal Navy dockyards – was the more stimulating, it was the idle, affluent elegance of Southsea front that drew Victoria whenever she had time to spare. Here there was air to breathe. Smokeless, fumeless air that was ever moving, and filled with rustling sounds from the movement of shingle.

Already a watering-place at the time when the old Queen acquired Osborne just across the water, Southsea, with its ever-growing naval-officer population, steadily spread its fine villas into what had a few years before been open coastline. Walking the three miles of promenade – the Isle of Wight as a backdrop, the sea calm and blue, the air refreshing and warm, warships, fishing boats and sailing dinghies sliding or bobbing through the Solent channel for interest – anyone could see why naval officers, who had been quartered in the town, often, upon retirement, dropped anchor there.

But Victoria had seen the other side of the coin. She had visited the huddled terraces of the dockers who serviced the navy vessels and the dank yards of the rope-and sail-makers. She had spoken to women who made uniforms for naval officers and fashioned stays and corsets for their wives.

Victoria Ormorod, who had been brought up no differently from the houseful of orphans her grandmother cared for on charity, had not led a soft life but, compared to those of the stay-makers, it was secure and luxurious.

‘Seven in the morning to seven in the evening, miss,’ a group of sixteen-year-old machinists had told her during their midday break – Victoria could not think of it as a dinner-break, for few of them had better than a quarter of plain bread and a drink from the factory standpipe – ‘Sometimes it’s only one-and-six a week that we’ve took home.’

‘That is quite illegal. Don’t you know that the Board of Trade lays down a minimum of thirteen-and-six?’ Victoria prompted.

‘That’s for over eighteens and for best work…’

‘And that’s if you don’t work in Portsmouth…’

‘Board of Trade rates don’t mean nothing here…’

‘Most you get over eighteen is half what they lay down…’

‘Portsmouth is the poorest paid you can get anywhere…’

‘And what about your unions?’ Victoria had asked.

‘Join a union, and you gets your minute’s notice…’

‘Tain’t fair, but like the master says, there’s three other girls waiting to step into your shoes and it’s better’n nothing.’

For a moment they had all clamoured to join in, letting their sense of injustice spill over for a few minutes till the factory whistle ordered them back to their machines.

And for a moment outside that factory, as she had done outside many others, Victoria Ormorod had applied an irritant to their sores of ill-use in the hope that scabs of apathy might not cover those sores. It was not easy for them, but to give in to the system was to make matters worse.

A VIEW OF LONDON. OLD HOUSES. HIGH HOLBORN.

Esther. It has all taken so long. Hwvr Ma is pleased. Otis trnsfrmd. Rather uncomftble. Can’t wait to get back to S.sea for our (almost) mutual b’day. Strange to be staying the night at home. All seems dull, except short vst from my Unc. Hewey. Back with you anon. (10 A.M. train). Yrs, O.H.

Thumping the King’s green head, Otis secured a halfpenny stamp on her card and put it ready to post so that Esther Moth would receive it by the first delivery. Otis and her mother had spent an entire day in gown and accessories’ departments, boot shops, and milliners’. Emily Hewetson had hired a cab for the day, costly but not so aggravating as trying to find one for hire at will. She loathed the grubby, smelly London cabs and their matching drivers, and set out on the shopping expedition for Otis’s new wardrobe with some irritation. But, by the time they went for high tea at Fortnum’s, her serene face showed her state of mind.

The change had been wrought in a gown shop where a forceful madame had brought out the very latest fashions for Otis.

‘No, no,’ said Emily Hewetson, looking at the drape and narrowness of the open-fronted skirts and imagining the stimulating way the fabric would divide, giving glimpses of stocking. She shook her head. ‘Something more suitable; you know that my daughter is only sixteen.’

Seventeen in a few days, thought Otis, but held her tongue. Emily Hewetson had enough to cope with, accepting this overnight transformation of a daughter from girl to maiden, without leaping into womanhood.

‘Ah,’ said the clever lady who had had for twenty years the privilege of dressing Mrs Martin Hewetson, wife of the Hewetson of Hewetson, Hewetson, Batt and Hewetson. ‘Of course, you are right, Mrs Hewetson. What a pity that madam is not thinking of adding to her own wardrobe. These, of course, as you will well know, are the newest styles to come to London. You are right, of course, I shall bring Miss Hewetson some separate items: some pretty blouses and plain skirts.’ She did not, however, take away the new styles, but left them hanging at a seductive distance from the chaise-longue upon which Emily Hewetson rested, and from there the desirable dresses hummed siren notes to mature vanity.

In Fortnum and Mason’s restaurant, restored with a little salmon pâté, green salad and brown bread, and a compote of fruit, Emily Hewetson smiled across the table at her daughter and sipped fragrant green gunpowder tea. ‘Well Otis, I think we have done very well this morning. Are you pleased with your wardrobe?’

‘I don’t like the idea of the stays.’

‘This is neither the time or place…’

‘I like the skirts, and the white blouse, and the spotted one.’ As she had tried them on in the gown shop, Otis had imagined the effect the deep yellow skirt and blouse with the gathered bodice would have upon Jack Moth when he saw her wearing them.

‘I shall get the Southsea man to come and look at your hair.’

‘Oh, Ma, must you? It will just get blown about on the seafront.’

‘Well, at least you will start out looking ladylike.’ Offering Otis some more of the refreshing tea, Emily said, ‘You wouldn’t have liked those new models at all, would you? I can scarcely see you, stepping out as you do on Southsea front, in those narrow skirts.’

‘Goodness no! They are so perfectly you, Ma.’

‘Do you think so?’ She smiled at the thought of all those tissue-lined boxes already on the van for delivery to The Grand.

Emily Hewetson was not really concerned for Otis’s immature opinion, but she did want somebody to whom she could talk of the six new gowns she had ordered. Six! She laughed lightly. ‘Heaven alone knows what your father will say.’ And oh, the trays of Madeira and sponge fingers they would have sent to their room over the next week or so.

‘He would never say a thing to you about your clothes. I don’t think he would mind if you had bought the jackets Madame showed you as well.’

‘Ah, my dear, that is where you are mistaken. When you have a husband you will know what I mean. The wife of a prosperous lawyer may go a little over her dress allowance if her husband feels flattered by having his wife looking rather better than his colleagues’ – clients have no confidence in a man who has a dowdy wife – but to go too far over at one time is to appear spendthrift.’

‘Pa would never deny you a couple of jackets – they were terribly pretty on you.’

‘They were, weren’t they? Horribly expensive. I did love them. But I shall have them, never fear. And your pa will feel all the better that he thought of buying them himself – as a surprise. You know your pa and surprises.’

Otis did. It had apparently been his idea to surprise her by the trip to London for the new clothes. ‘But he will not know about them.’

‘Oh, be sure he will know, Otis. He will know that Madame had thought only of me when she ordered, and that I refused them, reluctant to be profligate with the money the poor man works so hard for.’

Otis smiled a falsely compliant smile at her mother whilst she said to herself, I shall never, never be like you, Ma. You may as well have a bowl of trifle for brains the little use they get.

‘A woman understands not philosophy, but the making of a dumpling. Stick to socks and avoid sociology, and look after your husband…’

Ladies! This advice was given to women in Portsmouth Town Hall recently by Mr Victor Grayson.

The combined societies advocating both female and universal suffrage meet in unity tonight to put the varying arguments for

DEMOCRACY AND JUSTICE

Mr Frederick Pethick-Lawrence Miss Blanche Ruby Bice Portsmouth Town Hall, 7.30 P.M. Admission Free. Collection.

Jack Moth did his very best to show concern for his mother in the way that his father would have done, though he did think that his father, having been so careless as to do this to his mother, might have – this year at least – come away from London for a couple of weeks. It was never admitted, but the whole family knew very well that George Moth hated not being at work and that some particularly difficult investigation would always come up only days before they were due to leave.

One day, Jack thought to himself, one day I shall tell him just what I think.

It was now the Tuesday when Victoria Ormorod had said that she would be attending a public meeting in the town hall. He had carried out a survey of the hall and the roads leading to it so that he might loiter with the intent of seeing her when she arrived.

When he had asked his mother if she would be happy for him to go out that evening, he had discovered that it was one of Nancy’s free evenings.

‘No, I shall not ask her to change her evening off, Jack. To servants, free time is part of their wages. I would not go to my servants for a loan of money, neither shall I ask Nancy for a loan of her evening. Particularly as you have free time for the entire day.’

‘It’s a pity that Father doesn’t give you a bit more of his time. I sometimes wonder whether he wouldn’t rather live at Scotland Yard and visit us occasionally.’

‘Jack! Your father does the kind of work that knows no hours.’

‘My father does the kind of work that absorbs him so that he does not know that we exist.’

When Anne Moth looked down at the little jacket she was embroidering, Jack was at once contrite. ‘Oh, Ma, I’m a beast. It is only that…’ he paused, wondering whether he should tell his mother the whole story of how he fell in love and was likely to lose the lovely Victoria Ormorod if he did not go to the town hall tonight. He knew that she would be touched by the tenderness of it.

He related his romantic story. ‘…And I may never see her again after tonight.’

‘You will probably fall in love many times, Jack, before you discover your true love.’

‘How many times did you fall in love before you met Pa?’ He, of course, knew the answer, having heard their story related often.

‘Touché, my dear. But holiday romances usually have such short roots that they do not transplant well to everyday marriage.’

‘Goodness, Ma, I am not thinking of marriage.’ Which was not true: he had thought of marriage to Victoria Ormorod very many times lately.

‘As it happens, Mr Martin Hewetson has kindly said that he will come here this evening to discuss something with me. Esther will be here, and Nancy will be back by ten, so go along to your meeting.’

He gave her the kind of hug a young man gives his mother as compensation for having got his own way by playing on her maternal love. Having received many such hugs, Anne Moth smiled at her tall, handsome son and said, ‘Get along with you, and take your cupboard love with you. And what is this meeting all about?’

‘Blessed if I know. A Mr Pethick-Lawrence is speaking, that’s all that I know.’

She looked up sharply. ‘Frederick Pethick-Lawrence? Then it must be a Suffrage meeting. He once spoke at a Fabian meeting I attended. A good speaker, he was very persuasive.’

With that, everything about Victoria Ormorod fell into place. She was – she had to be of course – a supporter of female suffrage.

‘Enjoy your evening, my dear, it will do you no harm to listen to what Mr Pethick-Lawrence has to say.’

Now, as Jack haunted the entrance to the town hall, and saw the posters announcing Mr Pethick-Lawrence, he understood Victoria Ormorod’s manner – the way she had approached him at the fountain, her firm handshake, and the off-hand way she paid the luncheon bill. And she had said to him: ‘You may not enjoy the meeting.’ But he would. He really had nothing against women having a voice.

By the great trek of people making for the town hall, it was obviously a very important meeting. It was no wonder Victoria wanted to be here: it seemed that every young woman in every surrounding parish had come out in the summer sunshine. Many wore sashes of purple, green and white; others red, green and white. Some came in little groups carrying banners indicating ‘WSPU’, ‘NUWSS’, ‘WOMEN’S CO-OPERATIVE GUILD’, ‘UNION OF WOMEN TEACHERS’, ‘UNION OF WOMEN WORKERS’. There were Women’s Freedom Leagues, Church Leagues and National Leagues, Conservative Women, Temperance Women, Liberal and Independent Labour Women.

Which, Jack Moth wondered, might Victoria Ormorod support? Or could it be that she supported the Women’s Anti-Suffrage League and had come in opposition to all those? No, no, that did not fit at all.

At the entrance, young women were thrusting handbills and literature into people’s hands. Accepting one, he smiled down at its distributor, who wore a white hat trimmed with red and green and an armband showing that she was an ‘Official Steward’.

‘Nancy!’

‘Oh, Lord! Master Jack. Whatever are you doing…? I never took you to be interested.’ A shadow crossed her face. ‘I hope you aren’t an “anti” and come to beat us all up.’

Had a servant spoken so familiarly to any of his Cambridge friends, she might well have been sharply rebuked, but Jack Clermont Moth had inherited much of his mother’s attitude to the pecking order. ‘I’m not an anything. Somebody asked me to come along. I didn’t even know that it was a Votes for Women meeting. More to the point, I never took you to be interested.’

‘Oh yes. I’m interested in the whole lot of it. I don’t know all that much yet, but I have a friend who is teaching me. I do love the rousing feeling you get at meetings like this. It is food and drink to me.’

Jack saw the shine in her eyes, transforming her from the rather undistinguished servant who went determinedly about her work, to a bright, enthusiastic young woman in a white hat.

‘You look very nice tonight, Nancy.’

‘Thank you, Master Jack. I hope you enjoy the meeting.’

‘I understand Mr Pethick-Lawrence is a fine speaker.’

‘They’re both good speakers. They say the two of them fair turns your belly over – pardon the expression.’

The crowds were thickening and he found it difficult to check every face that passed them. But he felt sure that he would be able to pick out her statuesque figure and copper hair.

Nancy continued thrusting literature into people’s hands. ‘Was you supposed to meet your friends here, Master Jack? It an’t going to be easy, and if you wait too long you won’t get a seat.’

By seven twenty-five the hall was full.

‘Tell you what, Master Jack, if you want to you can come round the side with me where I’m going to get the collecting bags ready. You can get a good view of the audience from there, so you might be able to pick out your friends.’

The meeting got under way. And from his elevated position Jack systematically scanned the rows and rows of faces. He had got about half-way when Mr Pethick-Lawrence began speaking but, urgent as he was to discover Victoria, Jack found his search disturbed by a growing interest in the speech, and when the speaker talked of ‘wealthy women who own houses and land, employ servants and run the complex economy of a household and are yet debarred, merely because of their sex, from having any say, by way of a vote in the political life which is so vital to her interests’, Jack’s thoughts were drawn to his mother. Was he mistaken, or had she looked eager when she had said that she had heard Mr Pethick-Lawrence speak?

Frederick Pethick-Lawrence’s speech received such tumultuous applause that it drowned the jeers of the ‘Antis’. In spite of his desire to continue scanning the hall, Jack joined in. Nancy, who had come to stand by Jack, thwacked her hands together rapturously. ‘Isn’t he fine? Isn’t he a fine speaker, Master Jack?’ And he agreed that it was a truly passionate speech.

‘Passion? You’ll hear passion now. Blanche Ruby Bice is next. Come down with me into the aisle and listen.’

Realizing the impossibility of finding Victoria Ormorod in this great crowd, he went with Nancy who guided him to stand by other official stewards from where he continued to let his eyes roam over the heads of the large audience.

The buzzing and rustling suddenly ceased, and he followed the direction of all other eyes towards Miss Blanche Ruby Bice. Dressed in a white suit, her abundant copper-coloured hair bulging from under a plain, flat hat, Blanche Ruby Bice moved to the podium. The striking woman in white who had hushed the audience without a word was, without doubt, his own Victoria Ormorod.

Whilst he had been waiting in the street, she must have entered through a private entrance with the rest of the platform. And whilst he had been facing the audience and scanning their faces, she had been looking down upon them from the platform. Whilst he had looked for Victoria Ormorod, she had become the apparently heroic orator, Blanche Ruby Bice.

When she reached the podium it was obvious that, whatever the posters said, this was Miss Bice’s meeting. It was a woman’s cause and she was a woman. And what a woman. Jack Moth’s entire body felt singed by her presence and excited by the prolonged applause of the audience before she had even opened her mouth.

She did not begin speaking immediately but, without excuse or apology, she withdrew the pin and removed her hat, unwound a long filmy scarf, and flicked off her gloves finger by finger. All this she did so slowly and with such deliberation that for one fleeting moment Jack wondered where it would stop, and saw ahead where she pop, pop, popped the buttons at the neck of her blouse, unfastened her cuffs…

Having held the audience like an accomplished actress, she held up her bare hands in fists. At even the most rumbustious meeting of a Cambridge debating society, Jack Moth had never heard the whoops, whistles and applause that greeted her opening sentence.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am ready to fight for justice. Are you?’

Smiling, confident, she waited until the noise subsided into silence, then she leaned forward over the podium, resting on her forearms. Informal. Friendly. Smiling. Her eyes crinkling at the corners as they had crinkled at Jack over the tin-topped table on the pier.

‘This voting business that we have come together in Portsmouth to talk of this evening; this act that is so sacred, so important to the future peace of this country, so vital to the well-being of any democracy…’ She paused for a second, held up her hand and changed the tone of her voice to brusqueness. ‘I do not exaggerate, for I sincerely believe that the vote is all of these things. But…’

Now all puzzlement ‘…there are men (very many men) who would have us believe that it is only their sex which is capable of rational thought, only their sex which has the necessary grasp of fundamental politics to decide upon who shall govern us, only their superior sex which is capable of philosophic thought.’

‘Quite right!’ The response of that anonymous male voice did not raise the laughter it must have anticipated – it raised only angry hissing. Victoria/Ruby Bice held up her hand.

‘Ah, the gentleman says “Quite right”. Perhaps he is one who believes that our great novelist, George Eliot, ought to be at home making dumplings whilst her butler is thinking philosophical thoughts about how he may use his vote.’ The gales of derisive laughter must surely have made the heckler wish that he had never opened his mouth.

Jack leaned forward, wishing that he was as close to this goddess of a woman as he had been when sitting opposite her on South Parade Pier.

‘Does he also say “Quite right” when asked about convicts who have the right to vote? (I mean of course male convicts). Does he say “Quite right” when questioned about lunatics (male lunatics) having a perfect right to vote? And does he say that it is right that a white slaver and a drunkard should have more say in the government of this country than any woman in the land?’

If Victoria Ormorod knew anything, it was obvious that she knew how to use the passion and the tension that she had built up.

‘And so, whilst the convicts, lunatics and drunken white slavers of this country are voting, what of our women? What kind of women are we – we dumpling makers – who do not have a say in our own destiny?’

As she spoke, she used her hands constantly – long, large hands that bent backwards at the knuckles like a ballet dancer’s – and Jack could not but help remember the practical way those hands had dampened the towel and picked the streak of seagull lime from his sleeve. Had that really happened? Had she really teased him about laundering her towel, and had he sat tête-à-tête with her eating sandwiches and fruit?

She continued, ‘A woman may be a nurse, and not have the vote. A woman may be a doctor, and not have the vote. A woman may be a mayor, a teacher, a skilled worker or factory labourer, and not have the vote.’

She paused briefly; the silence was so charged with the tension she had built up that it seemed possible that it would arc like electricity. Her voice, quiet now, penetrated to the furthermost corners of the large, silent hall. ‘And a woman may be a mother, she may be the help, guide and be the greatest influence in the life of any man. It is she who will teach him most about morality, to know what is right and what is wrong; it is she who will teach him to be honest and honourable…’ Again she paused, seeming to let her gaze search out every eye for a response. Then her voice came out powerfully, passionately. ‘But she is not…’ she pointed her two forefingers like pistols ‘not to be trusted to have any say in the making of the very laws by which she must live. She may not’, again the pistols, ‘have the vote.’

The audience loved it. Loved the way she used her hands, small gestures; used her eyes, raising her brows; sometimes putting her forefinger to her mouth in a manner of contemplation before making her point, a gesture Jack Moth recognized.

Her speech lasted twenty minutes, although Jack Moth had no real idea of time whilst his eyes were fixed on Victoria. When the official expressions of thanks were being made, Nancy tapped his arm, saying, ‘I’ll have to go and pass my collecting bag around. What did you think, Master Jack? Wasn’t she splendid?’

‘Very.’

Something in his tone made Nancy look twice at him. Well, she thought, our young Master Jack’s had his eyes opened tonight. ‘Perhaps if you wouldn’t mind, I should be obliged if you wasn’t to tell the mistress.’

‘I’m sure that my mother would not have the slightest objection.’

‘It’s not so much that, sir, it’s that, if you believe in something like this, there don’t hardly seem a word that passes between people, in the normal way of talk, without it don’t have some bearing on your beliefs. And there’s times when it can be real uncomfortable for both parties, if you see what I mean. I’ve always found it best to keep my work and my politics separate.’

‘I was hoping you would tell me the arguments. I really am an ignoramus on the subject.’

‘Well, Master Jack, there isn’t a single argument that’s worth hearing against women getting the vote, and Miss Bice has told you the reasons for.’ And off she went to pass her collecting bags out.

Having hung about at the beginning of the evening like an errand boy waiting for a scullery maid, when Jack left the hall he allowed himself to be quickly carried away by the stream of people. He might easily have made his way to the back exit from which the speakers were bound to leave, but he felt odd, his thoughts at sixes and sevens, and certainly not adequate to come face to face with the woman who had swooped into Portsmouth Town Hall.

The ten-minute walk to Garden Cottage, Southsea, took him half an hour. He did not know how to think of himself now. When he left the house he had been in love with an ideal woman. Now…? He supposed that he was still in love all right, but with whom… with what? He had guessed her to be – now he cringed at the very idea – he had guessed her to be a singer or perhaps an actress.

What had she thought of him? His eagerness. The boyish way he had obeyed her rules about laundering the towel. His foolish banter. God, let the pavement swallow me up! She must have been quite amused. Whilst young Jack Moth had been making a fool of himself, Miss Victoria Ormorod had been in on her own secret that she was in reality Miss Blanche Ruby Bice who was – as was now plain to Jack Moth the ignoramus – a renowned and adored public speaker.

‘Did you enjoy Mr Pethick-Lawrence, Jack?’ his mother asked.

‘Oh… yes. He was very stimulating… very.’

Anne Moth had not been a wife and mother for twenty-odd years not to know when a member of her family was put out. Wisely, she thought, say nothing, it will come out when it’s ready. ‘Why don’t you have a nice glass of port, Jack… and you can pour me one.’ He did not notice that his mother’s cheeks were already flushed and there were empty glasses on the tray. And he had entirely forgotten that Mr Martin Hewetson had paid her a visit that evening; about what, it never occurred to Jack to enquire.

When Nancy returned she was not wearing her hat or armband and she looked at Mister Jack with nothing that suggested that they had seen one another since tea that afternoon.

Grand Hotel,
Southsea

Messrs Hewetson, Hewetson, Batt & Hewetson, Solicitors High Holborn, London

Dear Hew,

I shall be back in the office on Monday, as arranged. Southsea is pleasant enough, but one longs for something to do, some purpose to the day.

A small bit of good fortune, in that Mrs George Moth (before marriage the Hon. Anne Clermont –the Clermonts being, as you will surely know, Wessex’s foremost family) has asked H, H, B & H to handle a matter concerning her will which is (at present) in the hands of Asners of Mayfair.

No purpose in writing this, except that I have too much time on my hands, and I thought that you might like to know that we have a Clermont as a client. I explained the complications, but Mrs Moth was adamant that she wished me to draw up a document on the spot.

Of this more when I return.

Yours, Martin

Martin Hewetson had been surprised at the change in Mrs Moth that had taken place since he had seen her last. At Bognor Regis they had been only nodding acquaintances but he remembered clearly that she had been a petite, energetic and vivacious woman appearing to be much too young to have a grown son.

On the evening of his visit, as he had sat across from her in Garden Cottage, he was shocked at the change. Quite apart from the usual changes brought about by her condition, she was swollen and heavy-looking, with deep indentations on her fingers where rings had had to be removed, a moon face and puffy eyes. He had asked after her health and she replied that she was her usual fit self. He saw her reply for what it was. She did not wish to discuss her health.

He had often thought that it was a bit unfair that women had to undergo these discomforts and ravages to their lovely bodies in order to perform a natural function like reproducing. He would like to have a son, but he did understand Em’s lack of enthusiasm for the act from which they both gained such enjoyment when it occurred. Prevention was hardly mentioned even in the privacy of one’s bedroom, but Martin had firm opinions on the subject, even though he had not aired them since he was engaged in a debate at university: the sooner the adult population is able to view the sexual act openly and discuss it frankly without whispers and blushes, the sooner research into the regulation of pregnancies will come about, and we shall see an end to barefoot and unwanted urchins in the mean streets, and to couples performing unnatural forms of copulation for the sake of limiting the size of family. He had sounded pompous, but had been sincere. He supposed that Em knew what was what, but she was as loath to speak of it as of any other bodily function.

He had never known how, at the age of twenty, he had gained such knowledge or had formed these views, but he had done so and he had never altered, even though he had married a lovely and desirable woman. Thus, on Em’s say-so, they were to remain without any son to whom he could hand on Hewetson’s. If Otis had been a boy, what a thriving practice they would have.

The daughter Esther had come in and had, he had been glad to observe, been polite and concerned for their comfort. ‘May I get you something?’

‘Mr Hewetson looks like a port man – am I right, Mr Hewetson? I’m afraid that it is our servant’s evening off, and the place is too small for more than one.’

‘Nevertheless, ma’am, it is charming.’

‘It is, isn’t it? Bring a tray and glasses, Esther, and then either go into the garden or read in your room. I have a little private business to which Mr Hewetson has kindly agreed to attend.’

The girl had brought the tray, plumped her mother’s cushions, kissed her spontaneously and left the room. Either she had grown up, or it was as he supposed – that the episode at Bognor had been a storm in a teacup. She did not look at all the kind of girl who would get up to any nonsense.

‘I compliment you upon your daughter, Mrs Moth, she would seem to have a very sweet nature.’

‘It is about Esther that I wish to speak to you.’

She had paused for long seconds before she went on. ‘I’m sorry… I was trying to find the best words… I have a small property which was part of my inheritance from my mother. Putting it simply, I wish to make this over to Esther. I dare say that people who know that I am a Clermont will always suppose that I brought wealth to my marriage; but that is not the case – a certain amount of good solid stock and a little property, that is all. In my family, everything seems to end up in the hands of the males. I have always been somewhat rebellious – I suspect that part of George’s attraction for me was that my father forbade me to marry him.’ She smiled briefly, a smile that Martin Hewetson did not understand. ‘I trust that such confidences are not embarrassing to you?’

‘Madam, I should be a poor lawyer if I could not listen to my clients with understanding.’

‘I read you correctly then, at Bognor.’

He raised his eyebrows, surprised that she had even remembered him.

‘Well then, about Esther. I have one or two properties which my mother bequeathed to me – she had three daughters, she provided a little for each of us. And so I wish to provide for Esther. My will has been settled for years – my husband of course inherits. The Clermonts have provided for Jack, as they provided for his education at Winchester College. Jack, with all his advantages, has not the faintest idea of what he will do when he eventually comes down. Esther, however, has known for years what she wishes to do. She will teach.’

‘Ah…’

With a look, Anne Moth invited him to explain that ‘Ah’.

‘Otis too. For the last couple of years, she has been a perfect bore on the subject of Teacher Training College.’

‘I am glad: there is such a lack of opportunity for intelligent women in the professions generally, that good women teachers are vital. My impression of Otis is that she is a very bright girl who would never be content to have her hair dressed and wait for a prospective husband.’

Smiling wryly. ‘Mrs Hewetson would not care to hear that.’

‘Children seldom fulfil our ambitions for them. Now, the property. At the moment it is let off in rented rooms. It is nothing grand, but it has income. Esther will need assistance during the years of her training, and if something should happen so that I am not able to provide for her, then I do not want her to be at a financial disadvantage; neither should I wish the Clermonts to feel that they are obliged to support her. If she owns this little property, then she will be totally independent and able to withstand pressure.’

She had handed him three letters already prepared prior to his visit. One was for himself, one for Esther Moth, the third for a Ninian Moth.

‘I am not morbid, nor am I proposing to leave the world yet, Mr Hewetson, but one must always be prepared for our Maker playing tricks on us and calling us in at a moment’s notice.’ She had smiled.

‘God forbid that He should call you, ma’am, when you have this new child to live for.’

‘I intend doing my best to give my baby son a fond mother.’

‘A son?’

‘Oh yes, I am as certain of that as I was that Jack would be a boy and Esther a girl.’

‘Three children, ma’am. They are most fortunate. I have never wanted Otis to be an only child.’

Again she smiled her enigmatic smile. ‘There is time yet, Mr Hewetson, is there not?’

The turn of their conversation made him hot. He would have loved to have poured out to her and confessed to the passion, the plugs of sponge, the self-abuse and longings for another child, the frantic moods of Em when she believed herself to be pregnant again. But such an open confession to another human being – particularly one of the other gender – was impossible and he felt not one bit hopeful that things would be different in his own, nor yet even Otis’s lifetime. What fools we are, he thought.

Instead, he had asked, looking at one of the letters, ‘Ninian Moth?’

She had delicately patted her mound. ‘This is he. In the event of my death, that letter is for my son as yet unborn. George and I have already agreed on names. Instructions in the unlikely event of this being a girl are contained in my letter to you.’

As he took his leave of her, he said, ‘Now that you have dealt with the necessity, ma’am, all talk of death can cease. I shall draw up the papers and bring them down here to you within the week. You will have your child, provide for your daughter and live to be a hundred.’

On returning to The Grand, he would have liked to relate to Em the gist of their tantalizing conversation, but its frank trend, no less than professional ethics, forbade it.

BOATING. KENSINGTON GARDENS, LONDON.

I thought you’d like this card for your collection. Howevr it is also to say Happy Birthday to my one and only. A niece of seventeen, Lord, how I shall have to watch my· Ps and Qs now. I shall be joining you at the weekend, when we shall have a party (on me). Why not ask your Mothy friends. Fond love, Uncle Hew

VICTORIA PARK. SOUTHSEA.

Uncle Hewey, Many thanks for the birthday ‘sponduliks’ and the pretty painted card. (Please save this one too.) I bought a crab-net, use of which young ladies shld no doubt eschew. But for a B’day treat Jack took Esther and me a few miles out of town, where we caught many crabs. Threw back as too small. This is my best ever hol. A dance at Assembly Rms on Sat. Just rt for your vst. You wd hv liked crabbing. Love, Otis

Maximilian Hewetson – known almost universally as Hew – was, at twenty-five, a junior partner, the last of the names in the Hewetson, Hewetson, Batt and Hewetson partnership – and Martin’s half-brother. He was a very good-looking man with a fashionable narrow face, dark eyes and hair. He was clean-shaven, except for a beautifully-sculpted moustache that flicked up at the ends – as did both his mouth and his eyebrows, all of which gave his face a look of permanent good-humour. And this is what he was: a good-humoured, good-looking man. He was also good fun, which is exactly what a niece wants in an uncle. He was, too, a bachelor. A bachelor in a good London law practice, with a decent income and very nice rooms in which he entertained very well.

Emily Hewetson’s afternoon-tea friends said that it was time that he settled down. They probably did not know why they thought this, except that they did not like decent bachelors to go to waste. Much safer to have the junior partner out of ‘rooms’, married, respectably housed. A young man skating around London single was not the thing in a lawyer.

Otis, naturally, thought marriage would be the worst possible fate for her dear Uncle Hewey. Competition in the form of his wife would not exactly be Otis’s choice for herself either.

When he stepped off the train at Portsmouth Station, Otis was glad that she had asked Esther and Jack to come with her to welcome her Uncle Hew. He leapt lightly down and, whilst resting a sociable hand on a porter’s shoulder and giving instructions as to his bag, waved his curly-brimmed bowler at Otis.

She was wearing her new womanly clothes of broderie anglaise petticoats under a plain-fronted celandine-coloured skirt with folds at the back that swayed and swished as she walked; from its wide waistband burst a frosty white, high-collared blouse whose dozens of narrow vertical tucks gave it the shape of the body within. Her shiny hair swooped upwards and backwards to be caught and pinned in a bunch of curls. The flattering style, given her by her mother’s Southsea man, was topped by a flat hat with yellow ribbons. Boaters were de rigueur for all seaside promenaders.

When she had first appeared in her new role as young woman, she had obviously created an effect on Jack, for his gaze had followed her every move, which made her feel extraordinarily powerful. She did not exactly want him to fall down on bended knee and swear everlasting love for her, but she did like it that she had captured his attention. She had flirted with him; he had responded.

If Esther is right and he is in love, then he isn’t exactly faithful.

Now Max Hewetson was feeding her new-found delight in capturing his adult interest. Holding her at arm’s length, whilst she mocked herself with a twist of her parasol, he said, ‘Just look at you. One thing’s for sure, I shall no longer call you “Dumpling”. You are a lady… nay, a woman.’

‘Uncle Hew! Not in company.’

As Maximilian Hewetson’s eyes said when they lingered upon Esther: And what company! What absolutely splendid, ravishing company.

Esther Moth, dressed in similar style to Otis but with a blue and white striped skirt, her fair curls bunched high under the brim of her boater, looked back into Max Hewetson’s eyes as though she was quite a woman of the world.

His voice said, ‘Well, how delightful… the famous Moths. We meet at last. I have heard so much about you from Otis.’

Jack Moth was gentlemanly, as befitted a Cambridge man who had been abroad. But he was not effete like many of his colleagues: Inspector Moth had seen to that. Jack was to Max Hewetson as he was to very many people, an intriguing mixture of the two social cultures of his parents. Not that anyone could have put a finger on that being the reason for his likeableness: it was that he had the best of both worlds but was unaware of it.

Otis said, ‘Ma says I may take you off to the seafront at once. Pa says that he will talk shop with you later.’

‘Splendid! What is the plan? Nothing too strenuous: I mean to keep you two dancing till dawn.’

Esther Moth laughed. ‘Mr Hewetson, you do not know Southsea. The Assembly Rooms do not stay open so late.’

‘Well then, we must start early and dance every dance. Now then, whither do we wander?’

Esther and Otis exchanged glances, leaving Jack to speak up as they moved out into the busy road. ‘If it is not too much of a bore, we thought we would take some refreshment on the leisure pier at Southsea.’

‘The sea, mademoiselles, yes, the sea. I had wondered whether you might want to show me something fearful such as the very house where Charles Dickens was born, or the house where the Earl of Leicester fell to his death, or poor old Conan the Doyle’s surgery in which he was forced to give birth to Holmes and Watson in order to pay the rent… mind you, I should not mind looking at the latter, but this is a morning to breathe the ozone.’

Esther, who had heard a great deal from Otis of the famous Uncle Hewie, had expected more – or, perhaps, less, for she thought him rather too jolly for so good-looking a man. Esther liked handsome men but preferred that they be serious and intellectual.

That was Jack’s trouble too, he was far too jokey. Truly, it was impertinence on the part of men to think that women are entertained only if they are lighthearted and talk of inconsequential matters.

Esther had ideas, theories, beliefs that she would have liked to test out against men, but she hardly knew any men – Jack was so often away and in the vacations refused to be serious because he had enough of that kind of thing in term-time. Her father was always too tired or was going somewhere. Her schoolfriends’ brothers, whom she met from time to time, expected her to listen and be amused by them. Her uncles and cousins she seldom saw, since they mixed with a very different level of society from that of the Moth branch of the Clermont family.

The sea is flat, and as glittery as bathroom glass newly cleaned with vinegar. Short waves, edged with white ostrich plumes, uncurl and roll along the shingle shore like ringlets let loose from their pins.

Saturday morning and the hotels facing the sea are busy with cabs and porters and departing guests. Resort visitors on longer vacations stroll – as do these four – apparently aimlessly, eastward and westward, back and forth along the promenade between the two piers.

The morning is of the kind that English travellers like to set in the aspic of memory to take with them when setting forth down the Solent to go abroad – calm, sun-bathed and clear. Glittering windows, bright stone and well-painted façades, the hotels and apartments border the town with their pillared entrances, iron-railed gardens and window boxes, iron balconies and iron-framed canopies.

Set out before the hotels is the open common, the Rock Gardens, and Ladies Mile gardens. Here a vast army of invisible men, in coarse shirts, thick trousers and waistcoats, bend their backs to clip straight edges to the gardens, they razor its grass, dead-head flowers, feed, mulch and rake its borders to a profusion of foliage, bloom and scent.

Sloping away from this controlled environment is the seashore, which, except for the twin pier and a couple of rickety wooden jetties, is middling wild. Here, young ladies with full skirts and nipped waists walk uncertainly on shifting shingle, occasionally clutching their young man’s arm for support, whilst their married sisters, and mothers with full bosoms and stay-boned waists, walk the flat promenade. The predominating colours of the women’s clothes are those of the sweetpeas and annual summer plants blooming in the town parks.

The men here see themselves as gentlemen; and retired sea captains see themselves as gentlemen of rank, their naval titles being cherished and aired daily, lest anyone think that these are merely old men wearing peaked caps and blazers. With great frequency these retired officers, who still ache to issue orders, soon take ‘JP’ to their name. What would the Portsmouth Bench do without its retired naval officers to clap offenders in irons?

Children with broad hats and healthy faces patter around the sedately moving adults. Little girls dare the waves to touch their boots and squeal at a spot of foam; small boys hurl back into the sea large stones that have taken a millennium to be eased out of the water and up the beach.

But we are talking only of Southsea, and only of the promenade, and only of the people with enough leisure and income to spend their Saturday mornings with nothing more to do than to wait for Saturday afternoon.

In Nancy Dickenson’s part of town, whose shoreline is a continuation of that of Southsea, things are different.

There. The air smells of fish, tar and oil, of unwashed clothes on unclean bodies. Peeling doors and shopfronts, market stalls, noisy taverns and grimy bars. A smell of fish and staleness. Cobbled streets, dankness and water. Poor houses, street runnels. Dogs on the loose. Strings of monotone washing strung across yards. Sailors briskly coming ashore, sailors lurching aboard, sailors making business with prostitutes. Alleyways, yards, narrowness. Rickety wooden structures that strangers can never fathom. Occasional splash of colour from a potted geranium in deep shadows. Back-yards that smell of fish and beer, urine and vomit. Even in the sunshine, walls greened from dripping gutters are damp.

There the sea has no shingle to push around for, before the waves can unfurl, the swell hits the man-made piers, wharves, landing-stages and docks, and slaps itself against these barriers, churning its soggy cargo of fish-gut, rotten vegetables, rotten fruit and, occasionally, a rotten human. There the sea is apparently not even middling wild, but when the tide runs it runs deep and fast in the undertow, surging and swirling and sucking its way in and out of the narrow channel.

There the children go mostly barefoot and often bare-arsed. They are thinner than average and shorter. Already many work the Saturday market, pushing carts, holding horses still, shouting wares and minding stalls whilst the holder goes to the tavern or the cockle-stall; and many young girls are at their machines in the stay or shirt factories.

Close to the Harbour Station, where the two worlds meet, the shoreline is a stinking sludge of oil and sewage and mud. Into this ooze at low tide, near-naked children leap to retrieve coins flipped by passers-by. The mud-larks are popular entertainment. As far as anyone knows, few children have come to harm here. Good healthy mud… certainly good, healthy pickings.

On Saturdays, Nancy does not get time off. She is at Garden Cottage pressing out the creases where she has altered the waist of her mistress’s gown, and pressing in the pleats of the minutely tucked bodice of Miss Esther’s dress and stiffening Master Jack’s collars to spring-coils.

So, she is not with the people she knows best, the crowd of girls and women released from the stay-making factory who, fuelled by the prospect of not having to get up in the morning, are hurrying and laughing to wash their faces and arms and feet and put on their best skirts and hats and go about in groups.

At least the single women are.

The married ones who have put in six and a half days bent over a sewing machine in the crowded factory, look forward to a day at the sink beating dirt out of clothes, a bit of a gossip over the clothes-line, an evening in a bar with a glass of stout, and a night on their backs with their hard-handed men.

To anyone outside this community and outside its time, dockland is not a gentle place. Girls become drudges too soon, boys become cheap labour. But they have taste-buds that respond to beer and cockles and sweetness of any kind. They have ears that love the old squeeze-boxes played in bars, and street-organs trundling the streets. They have nostrils through which they are tantalized into wanting hot pies and hair-oil and flowery scent. And they have nerve endings as sensitive to the touch as any lady and gentleman who have tempted one another in bed with Madeira and sponge fingers.

It is from those docklands, where she has been meeting some of her most ardent admirers at their factory gates, to Speakers’ Corner on the promenade at Southsea, where she is to address equally loyal but better-off members of the NUWSS, that Victoria Ormorod is striding like a youth.

THE AUDITORIUM OF THE THEATRE-ROYAL, PORTSMOUTH, IN 1900.

Aunt Flora, I have arrived safely, but have not yet seen Martin. Otis sends you her love. She looks much more her age now that Em has got her up a bit. (Pleases you, eh?) Am taking luncheon al fresco on the Pleasure Pier. Southsea appears to be a most affable town, with much to do. Within a mile or two of where I now sit is the Isle of Wight, all green and mysterious. Yours, Maximilian Hewetson

Jack, pleased to have male company, was on tenterhooks and feeling a bit of a cad as he watched Max Hewetson leisurely writing his local view cards.

It had been Jack’s scheme that they come here, and to achieve his ends he had been forced to use subterfuge, for had Esther known why he wanted to come, she would have teased him in a very childish way. His trick had been to let Esther and Otis believe that it had been their own idea to eat here, and it had worked, for Otis had sworn them to secrecy about the true reason for coming this far from The Grand Hotel. ‘We cannot help it if we happen upon a meeting, and if it happens that we are caught up in the march by accident, then Pa cannot say anything, but if he believes that it is a scheme, then he may well try to chain me to the wall again.’

Jack felt caddish, because they were here not in order that Otis’s uncle could take in the sea air, but so that Jack Moth could once again see Victoria Ormorod in the flesh and hear her as Blanche Ruby Bice making an open-air speech at Speakers’ Corner. He knew that there was some bad feeling between Victoria’s faction, the NUWSS, and the militant Pankhurst followers, the WSPU, to say nothing of the Anti-factions. The Pankhurst faction worked to get publicity and notoriety, to get the police and press involved, to get arrested, to get reported, to go to prison.

Jack Moth knew all this and, now that it had come to the hour, foresaw the possibility of another fiasco involving Otis as when, in showing off to Otis, he had capsized the dinghy. Then as now, Otis’s exuberant enthusiasm for new experience had carried the scheme along.

‘Heavens, Jack, we only wish to hear the lady speak. Don’t you consider it part of one’s education to listen and debate issues? Surely you do? I have heard that at university there is a great deal of debate going on.’

Jack thought that Esther, in her sly way, was amusing herself looking on to see whether anything might happen. Now, second thoughts. Father had said that he might come down next week – Jack would be mortified to be accused of not caring for the women whilst Father was sweating away in London.

Too late! Max Hewetson had heard the band and seen the tops of the banners as the parade, flanked by police constables, made its way past the Rock Gardens to Speakers’ Corner.

‘I say! Is that a carnival? Shall we go and look?’

He noticed that the two girls again glanced at one another, and wondered whether this parade was the reason for the rather over-long walk they had brought him on to eat a few indifferent sandwiches and a slice of rather good apple pie.

When they reached Speakers’ Corner a large crowd had already gathered.

‘Heaven save us,’ said Max Hewetson, ‘it’s Mrs Pankhurst’s Lot. Who wants to hear their twaddle?’ Jack Moth’s neck reddened and stiffened and looked ready to crow. Oh, Lord! thought the older man, been and ruffled some feathers. Has the young cock fallen for the twaddle, or for some campaigning young lady?

Following the direction of Jack’s gaze, Max Hewetson had no doubt. Not a girl, but a full-blown woman. Certainly the lad had taste, even though she might prove wasted on so young a graduate. ‘Who’s the pretty copper-nob?’ he asked.

‘I believe that she’s called Blanche Ruby Bice, and I believe that she is to make a speech on the conditions of work in the local shirt-making factories.’

‘Ah… so that’s Ruby Bice. Of course I have heard of “Miss White, Red and Green” – isn’t that how her name is made? Who has not heard of her? But I have never seen her in the flesh, so to speak.’ And very nice flesh too: his gaze taking in the detail of Victoria’s figure and face. ‘I’ve heard it said that she is a French aristocrat. But I say… look at that hair… Russian princess, no less.’

‘From her looks, that may well be true,’ said Jack Moth, placated by the warmth of his acquaintance’s admiration. ‘How do you come to know of her? Until this week, I had never heard of Ruby Bice.’

‘She makes speeches. That’s how she gets known. In London, she can fill any hall to capacity, so I’ve heard.’

‘Does she go to prison?’

‘No, no. The trouble-makers are Mrs Pankhurst’s Lot. Apparently our Miss Ruby is a bit of a pacifist. I should like to know what she would do if a man grabbed her by the waist – she’d soon become a warrior lady then.’

‘I don’t see that that is the same thing at all, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Not at all, old man.’

‘Well then, any lady fights for her honour, no matter what.’

‘But pacifism means peacefulness, and not peacefulness when it suits,’ said Max Hewetson with the condescension of a Sunday-school teacher, or perhaps with the sweet reason of a lawyer.

‘I believe you are mistaken. I can see that a woman may be pacific in her beliefs yet not eschew entering a fight… as in fighting for a just cause. Your argument fails because you equate passivity with pacifism.’

A banner pole carried horizontally caught the two debaters behind the knees. ‘And if you two ignoramuses don’t shut up, you’ll get a demonstration of the difference.’ The interrupter of Jack and Max was a small woman wearing the mauve, green and white of ‘Mrs Pankhurst’s Lot’. ‘If you want to hold your own meeting, go somewhere else, though if you ask me, you’d do better to listen to the speaker.’

Jack was more than willing to stand and look at the woman who was still Victoria Ormorod as he had known her during those days when he had fallen secretly in love. She was dressed in the plainest of clothes, a full-sleeved white voile blouse across which rested a band of white, green and red which swelled and fell over the contours of her figure, and rose and dipped with her every breath; a creamy white skirt with the same plain front and swaying back as at the last meeting, and the ubiquitous white flat straw hat, around which was bound a ribbon of white, green and red.

Jack Moth’s heart cracked, for it suddenly occurred to him that such a creature could not possibly have remained in an unmarried state. She did not wear a ring, but that did not signify, he had heard that suffragettes often went ringless. Then he remembered that he had undertaken to be responsible for Esther and Otis. ‘Where are the girls?’ he whispered to Max Hewetson.

‘They have wormed their way to the front.’

‘Lord! They shouldn’t be there.’

‘Oh come, Jack, there will be no trouble today – the sun is shining.’

‘Sssh! Sssh!’ Hissed all around them.

‘You stop here, old fellow, and I shall fetch them back.’ He disappeared into the crowd.

Suddenly the crowd cheered, and he was lost. Victoria Ormorod stepped up on to the banana-box platform. He did not care that she was Ruby Bice, he did not mind what she said, yet, almost against his inclination he was drawn to listen.

She smiled in a most friendly way at the crowd, and at some policemen. ‘Gentlemen, the day is so hot that we shall not take it amiss if you remove your helmets and loosen your collars.’

Some wag called, ‘Or we could do it for you.’ The crowd laughed, and Victoria Ormorod shook her head at them in disapproval.

‘No, no, ladies, the NUWSS is a peaceful movement, concerned to better the lot of working-class women, which we cannot do if we are languishing in gaol.’

A woman shouted, ‘They take no notice of our cause if we are not destructive.’ Supported by some cheers by members of Mrs Pankhurst’s Lot.

Jack would have liked to leap to her defence and tell them to be quiet, that he had not come here to listen to them, but to the great Ruby Bice. Oh Lord, how the name clashed with her personality. She was Victoria Ormorod.

‘…and only today, I was in a factory where girls work from eight in the morning till eight at night for less than half of the agreed rate, and there are girls, of sixteen or seventeen years of age, who work for as little as one and sixpence a week.’

The crowd drew in its scandalized breath.

‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in your own town. One and sixpence! Less than the price of a six-inch pudding basin (which, for those among us who may not be au fait with such domestic matters, costs one and ninepence). And do you know what these girls are producing… for less than the cost of a six-inch pudding basin?’ Her eyes alighted on Jack and held his gaze. ‘They are producing items of uniform for the Royal Navy.’

Her eyes still held Jack’s, but only Jack knew that; to the rest of the crowd she was addressing each of them. She said to him, ‘If our English officers knew of the conditions under which their uniforms are made, I am sure that they would never wear them.’

Jack nodded, indicating how fiercely he agreed.

‘Thirteen shillings and sixpence is the agreed Board of Trade rate for an eighteen-year-old girl performing this very best kind of tailoring.’ Her eyes returned to Jack. ‘And we intend to put an end to such injustices as these.’

A man at the front of the crowd called in a hectoring voice, ‘What you going to do, dot the factory manager one with your parasol?’ He was either a brave man or an idiot of the first water to ridicule the idol before her own crowd.

Jack thought him a fool, but wonderful Victoria Ormorod was not put out in the slightest by him. She smiled at him, and then at the audience. ‘Poor gentleman, he still believes it necessary to use violence to achieve one’s ends. Now, if you will allow me, sir, I will continue my story of my visit to the tailoring sweat-shops of Portsmouth. There will be plenty of time for questions later if you wish.’

He would not give up. ‘Would you say you were a pacifist, then?’

From the university debating society, Jack had learned the technique of heckling speakers to throw them off balance. It seemed obvious that this was the man’s purpose.

‘Yes, sir, I would say that I am a pacifist, an ardent one. I believe in settling any dispute by peaceful means.’

‘Right, so that if your meeting was to be spoilt by some person who kept interrupting, you would not lose your temper.’

‘I hardly promise that, I have a very fine temper. However, what I do believe is that the world has had its fill of aggression. Our only fight is for the minds of our masters. Our army is the common people, our ammunition, words.’

‘You got plenty of them, all right.’

The audience, most of whom had come solely to listen to their adored Ruby Bice, were becoming restless. There were a few angry shouts to throw him out. Victoria dowsed those sparks with laughter when, indicating the wide expanse of sea, she said, ‘We can hardly throw him out… can we?’

‘You never answered my first question…’

‘Which was – would I, ah… “dot” a man with my parasol? In a word, no.’

A clear and angry voice rang out, ‘But I would!’ And a celandine-coloured parasol clouted the man across the head, sending his hat spinning underfoot and the man crashing down.

Jack recognized both voice and weapon.

It was the parasol which had been with them all morning. He had held it, retrieved it, hooked it on table edges and twice saved it from loss. The parasol was, unmistakably, the one covered in the same fabric as the skirt that was cut to sway provocatively.

His heart sank as police dived into the little mêlée with relish, where they were then attacked themselves. He tried to push forward, but the crowd closed in and so barred his way. Anxiously, he skirted around and reached the front, where he saw Max talking to a policeman with the same comradeliness as he had used on the porter. But it didn’t work. The constable, firmly gripping Otis’s arm, marched her to where a sergeant and a contingent of constables waited beside a police van.

His father would no more believe that he was blameless of the consequences of this incident than of the episode at Bognor.

---

The birthday celebration dinner – and Otis’s entry into the world of assembly-room dances – was not at all as had been planned.

If there is one thing at which the English middle-classes excel, it is ‘putting a good face on things’. Had it not been for Max making light of the incident, Emily Hewetson would have made her excuses to Mrs Moth and dismissed the whole idea. But Martin Hewetson had said, ‘Don’t let us be too hasty, Em, not just now we have got a Clermont on our books.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Martin!’ she snapped. ‘You sound like a grocer.’

He had shut up, knowing that Max could twist her round his little finger.

‘But twice, Max, first at Bognor and now here. That young man has no sense of responsibility. You are not going to tell me that he didn’t know what happens when there are suffragettes about.’

‘Be fair, Em, Jack Moth was no more to blame than I.’

‘He must have known that there are often scuffles there on Saturday afternoons… you could not be expected to know that.’

‘It was a quiet enough meeting, and most of this talk about mayhem is got up by the newspapers.’

‘So, what you are saying is that the meeting was quiet but Otis created a disturbance… is that what you are intimating, Max?’

‘Dear Em, not at all. The man was being an utter bore – we have free speech in this country and he would heckle. I think Otis was quite splendid dotting him one over the head.’

‘Max! How can you, a partner in Hewetson, Hewetson, Batt and Hewetson, sit there drinking tea and say such a thing?’

‘Look, my dear, what is done is done and no harm has come to anyone. If you are going to fret about it, then you will have worry lines by the time you are forty.’

Max knew her age well enough, and he knew too that damage to her complexion would concern her quite as much as damage to Hewetson Batt’s reputation.

‘If you take my advice, Em, then you will let me give Otis and her friend their dinner and dance, and everyone will behave as though nothing untoward happened.’

‘We must say something, if only to show that young man…’

‘Em, Em. If you will go on about Jack Moth, then I shall think that you are having a sly dig at myself, for I was standing close by Otis and Esther.’

‘But you were not to know.’

‘It is no good you making excuses for me, Emily. I should have insisted that we all move on very quickly, instead of which we idled there looking for a bit of entertainment.’

‘Entertainment! Really, those women should all be locked up.’

‘I’m sure that would please them no end.’ He grinned at her and she succumbed as she always did, and agreed that they should have their social evening and try to enjoy it.

‘I don’t know what young girls of today are coming to. Otis is so irresponsible. I don’t know what will become of her if these women get their way and are given the vote. Things like the running of the country must be left to men who understand these things. Can you imagine Otis having a say in governing the Empire?’

Martin, who had kept his head down, knowing that his half-brother had a way with Em in a state, said defensively, ‘What you say then, Em, is that the terrible Jack Moth is more suited to governing the Empire than say – yourself, for example.’

Such a comment was unfair in a family wrangle, so she ignored it.

‘I shouldn’t worry, Em,’ Max said. ‘It won’t happen. And in any case, you women have enough to do with families and servants – and sorting out dolts like me.’ He smiled engagingly at her.

Before he left her sitting-room, he broached the subject, as he had promised Otis and Martin that he would. It was a gamble whether this was the best moment, but he thought he knew his sister-in-law well enough. ‘I’ll tell you what I would do, Em, if Otis were my daughter. I would get her doing something that was so time-consuming that she had no time for idle hands, and so well regulated that there was always someone on the look-out for her welfare.’

Emily Hewetson cocked an eyebrow at him quizzically.

‘I suppose you have come to plead her case for applying to Stockwell College. I dare say she has put you up to it, or Martin. Probably both.’

‘Well, not specifically Stockwell – but that is one possibility: there are other good colleges teaching degree courses. And she certainly wants to do it. That’s half the battle, isn’t it?’

‘But Max, Otis a teacher. Do you really wish to see your niece teaching sums in some grubby little school?’

‘No, Em. But I should not mind seeing my niece as head of one of these splendid Girls’ Trust Schools.’

‘And never marry! There is no question of both of course.’

‘Of course Otis will marry. But she does have this bee in her bonnet about education, so why not let her see what it is like? Sign her up, but make a pact with her that she cannot withdraw on a whim. She may well hate it after a month, but make her stay there. Let Martin draw up a document if you like – that will show her how serious you are.’

‘Three years. She will be twenty when it’s over.’

‘Right. A much easier age for a rumbustious young lady like our Miss Otis.’

Fully aware that he had charmed her into it, she agreed that Otis should apply for a place at Stockwell College.

---

Before dinner, the Hewetsons assembled in a small lounge to await the arrival of their guests, and turn their good face to the world. Otis knew that she was again being tested and on sufferance. It was not too difficult for her to appear sedate, for the experience of the afternoon had been quite chastening.

Nothing much had happened, except for being grabbed and hauled before a police sergeant. Uncle Max had dealt with the situation, saying that the heckler had been exceedingly unpleasant over many minutes, and that his young niece had been understandably annoyed at such disrespect.

It had not been pleasant, having a uniformed police sergeant in full view of passers-by wag a finger and tell her that it was quite within his power to handcuff her, put her in the Maria, haul her off to the cells and threaten to lock her up until her case was heard. A power he adjusted slightly once he had read Max’s Hewetson, Hewetson, Batt & Hewetson, Attorneys-at-Law card. ‘I’m giving you a caution then. And if you’ll take my advice, young lady, you’ll steer well clear of that there lot. They’re trouble wherever they go.’

Otis’s instinct was to contradict him by telling him that he was quite wrong, it was she who had made the trouble, the wonderful Miss Ruby Bice had not for a second let the man’s rudeness and taunts ruffle her – but she chose discretion.

If it had not been for the fact that from experience Otis knew that things always got back to parents, she would have told them nothing of what had happened. As it was, Uncle Max had related it as a funny story in which Otis appeared as the victim of a gross mistake and ended up being ticked off for it. They had not fallen for it entirely: there had been a lot said by both parents, and the Bognor incident had been mentioned. Otis appeared chastened before them, endeavouring to use Ruby Bice’s technique of not arguing, rising above a desire to answer back.

Her mother had suggested that she wear a pretty new pink creation sent down from London, but when Otis arrived in the public sitting-room, she was dressed in a cream skirt, not intended for evening wear, and a white bodice with large sleeves. Emily Hewetson forbore to say anything, her own highly complicated creation of tucks, flounces, lace and piping being greatly to her satisfaction. Otis forbore to ask whether her mother knew that the girls who had sewn it may have earned not enough to buy a six-inch pudding basin.

The surprises of the day were by no means over, for when the Moths arrived, there, tenderly assisting his wife, was Inspector Moth.

Otis, having on the last occasion seen him only as Esther’s formidable father, was surprised to discover that he had metamorphosed into an older edition of Jack, and for the first time saw that a man did not necessarily lose his handsomeness or attractiveness when he became older than twenty-five. And she had been gratified when he had boldly and slowly let his gaze take in her own transformation. He had smiled and bowed over her hand. ‘I trust that this beautiful young woman does not change back into a barefoot urchin at the stroke of midnight?’

Otis would have been furious had anyone suggested that she had learned much from observing Emily being provocative to attractive men, but she smiled and held his gaze and his fingers a second or two longer than was proper – as Emily would.

Emily Hewetson had quite forgotten what a handsome man the inspector was and, as she had on that other occasion when she had met him, thought: He really must have been a man any impressionable young girl might easily have run away with. He took her hand, making it look very pale and delicate in his enormous one, and bent low and kissed it with a very old-fashioned courtesy.

‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘I must ask your pardon for coming unexpectedly when your kind invitation was already declined on my behalf. But I could not miss my little girl’s birthday celebration, and I have only minutes ago arrived from London.’

How Emily’s rose-buds tingled at the pressure of his warm lips, the outlines of which were not entirely smoothly shaven.

‘My dear Inspector, you have no need to apologize, this is entirely a family occasion. We are pleased to have the opportunity of renewing the acquaintance. Your family must be delighted to have you with them again.’

‘A flying visit only, ma’am.’

Anne Moth, her eyes slitted with smiling, said, ‘He came down especially for me.’

She and Mrs Moth greeted one another with the sweet politeness of two mothers who know that their children have been up to something and each hope that it is proved that they are not the one to be found wanting as a parent. ‘Mrs Moth, you are blooming. The ozone in Southsea must be of a very high quality.’

Emily Hewetson had forgotten that she was cross with Jack Moth when he said in a low voice, ‘Mea culpa, does the lovely lady forgive me?’ and allowed herself to be as charmed by him again as she had been on her visit to Garden Cottage. For all their faults, this family was indeed a very interesting one, to say nothing of their extreme personableness.

After dinner, Mrs Moth, pleading that she felt a little disturbed, no doubt because of the excitement of George coming and the heat of the night, decided to sit on the terrace where she would get the sea breezes. She insisted that George have at least a turn or two in the Assembly Rooms. Martin Hewetson insisted that he too would prefer sea breezes and an opportunity of sitting with Mrs Moth.

Otis and Esther told one another how wonderful it was that, after expecting to be in disgrace for what had happened earlier, they were having the best party ever, with their two families behaving like old friends.

Neither of the girls had previously attended what was to them a glittering celebration. Last year Esther had attended a police officers’ occasion, but it had been stuffy and no one had had any style. Here, where the high society of Southsea, the Royal Navy, and the Royal Marines had come to dance, the men wore immaculate formal dress or dress-uniform and the women had fashionable gowns with swooping décolletage.

That she had not much inside her own prettily swathed and flounced bodice had not, until tonight, concerned her very much. Otis was fortunate, her bosom was already as full as a woman’s and strained against the white voile of her plain blouse. Well, thought Esther, perhaps this is all I am going to get. Perhaps she would be like her mother and only have any bosom to speak of when she was in that condition. Well, that wasn’t so bad, Esther quite liked babies. She felt vaguely sad. Until, that is, just as they were all walking through to the terrace, her father appeared with a young man whose back he slapped in hearty pleasure.

‘Anne, Anne, you will never guess who it is that I have discovered. In barracks in Southsea, but enjoying a spot of leave right here at The Grand.’

Mrs Moth was sure that she never would guess, nor spoil George’s delight by doing so.

‘My life-saver! The young man who dragged me from the Thames when I was unconscious and bleeding from the wound dealt me by that villain.’ Turning the young man so as to include Emily Hewetson and the girls in his pleasure. ‘And only just in time.’

Emily responded as required. ‘Goodness! How dreadful.’

George Moth laughed loudly. ‘Why, ma’am? That he was in time?’ Again he slapped the young man’s shoulder.

‘I know who you are,’ said Esther, ‘you are Pa’s famous Lieutenant Blood.’

The Lieutenant’s eyes alighted upon the pretty, fairy-like creature with pale golden hair and delicate figure, a porcelain doll of a girl he could have swept up in his arms and run away with.

It was the dearest of all love stories. Love at first sight.

To the nine people present at the moment when the young man took Esther Moth’s hand and said, ‘Lieutenant Bindon Blood, at your service, Miss Moth,’ there was, for ever after, a fleeting moment of strangeness whenever the noun ‘blood’ – proper or common – was uttered; for Anne Moth said a quiet, ‘Oh, George!’, and looked with astonishment at her white satin shoes into which rivulets of scarlet were running.

---

Several hours later, a dedicated and concerned obstetrician said that, no matter what, there was nothing that could have been done. ‘Mothers who are apparently perfectly healthy, die in childbirth. We do not know why.’

What was done to Anne Moth in order to try to save her was not childbirth. But, in the face of the tragedy and grief of her death, to say so might be thought of as pedantic and cruel.

Inspector Moth had the weakly, premature child christened Ninian within an hour of its birth. A name he did not like, but which was a Clermont name and one which Anne had wanted. When Esther first saw the tiny creature she felt as heartsore for it as she had for a motherless kitten she had once reared on milk given by dropper. Not only heartsore but as protective of it as though it were her own child. Because of the kitten, she had called her shrivelled little brother ‘Kitt’. No one, except Esther, expected the baby to survive; but it did.