‘Have you seen the news this morning, Tavy?’ Cyril asked. He was sprawled in his usual deckchair in his usual place on the beach, basking in the last of the September sun, with his feet propped up on Dora’s tin bucket. ‘Right up your street.’
‘We don’t want to be bothered with news,’ Emmeline told him, handing the baby back to Mrs Greenacre. ‘We’re on holiday.’
Octavia held out her hand for the newspaper. She was languid with love, sprawled in her own deckchair and feeling as if she could sleep for a month, but something in his mocking expression told her that this was news she ought to know.
‘Suffragettes in Birmingham being force-fed,’ the headline said. She was instantly alarmed and read on, thinking, what do they mean ‘force-fed’? How can you force someone to feed? The article gave her more information but it didn’t answer her questions. ‘It was confirmed in the House of Commons today,’ it said, ‘that several of the nine suffragettes in prison in Winson Green in Birmingham have been force-fed. The announcement came in response to a question from Labour MP James Keir Hardy, who was told the Home Office authorised the action to prevent the women killing or harming themselves through self-starvation.’ Oh, what nonsense! As if they’d do a thing like that!
‘Was I right?’ Cyril said.
‘Yes,’ Octavia said shortly. ‘You were. I must write to Mrs Emsworth and find out what’s happening. It sounds terrible.’
He was grinning at her, almost as if he was gloating. ‘They’re treating ’em rough,’ he said, ‘and not before time. Serve ’em right. Now perhaps they’ll see sense and stop making a nuisance of themselves.’
‘They’re standing up for the right to vote,’ Octavia told him crossly. He really was very obtuse. ‘It’s a matter of principle and they’re being extremely brave.’
‘That, dear coz,’ he said, ‘is a matter of opinion. Some people would say they’re being extremely stupid and making a nuisance of themselves.’
‘Then some people would be wrong,’ Octavia said. ‘Oh, come on, Squirrel, be fair. Men have the vote so why shouldn’t we?’
‘Because you’re women, old thing,’ Cyril said. And yes, he was gloating.
‘Where’s Tommy this morning?’ Em said, intervening before this could develop into a row. It was much too pleasant out here on the beach for anyone to be quarrelling. ‘He is a slugabed. He’ll be late for lunch if he doesn’t come soon. The sun’s high already.’
‘He’s on the promenade, ma’am,’ Mrs Greenacre said. ‘Waving.’
As he was, and after a few long-legged strides he came crunching down the pebbles towards them.
‘Where have you been?’ Emmeline said. ‘We’ve been worrying about you.’
‘No you haven’t,’ Cyril corrected her, determined to make mischief one way or another. ‘You said he was a slugabed.’
‘Been to London, old thing,’ Tommy said. ‘Bought myself a flat.’
‘What, there and back?’ Emmeline said, blinking in disbelief. ‘All that way? This morning?’
‘Drove like the clappers,’ he told her. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me about the flat?’
So they asked him and he unfolded a deckchair, sat down in it and told them. It was in Kensington, no distance from the tube station, unfurnished, ‘so I shall have to look slippy and see to that before October,’ and not particularly well decorated, ‘so I suppose I’d better see to that too.’ But the views were top hole and there was a garage for the car and restaurants all over the place and Hyde Park just over the road and he could get to the West End and back in seconds, so all in all he thought he’d got a bargain.
‘I thought you were going back to Bucharest,’ Cyril said rather sourly. ‘I can’t see the point of a flat in London if you’re living in the embassy in Bucharest.’
‘Got to have somewhere to come home to, old thing,’ Tommy told him easily. ‘Place of my own and all that sort of thing. I shan’t stay in Bucharest when I’m on leave.’ And he turned his head to smile at Octavia.
The little movement wasn’t lost on Emmeline. So I’m right, she thought. They are walking out. She’d suspected it ever since that second afternoon and now she was sure. He’ll ask her to marry him and they’ll live in the embassy while he’s working and come home to the flat when he’s on leave. Very sensible. ‘It all sounds splendid,’ she approved. ‘I shall expect to be invited to tea as soon as it’s ready for occupation.’
‘And so you shall be,’ Tommy promised.
Octavia didn’t comment. That could wait until they were alone together. She was glad to think he’d got a flat and that he intended to come home when he was on leave and live in it, but she didn’t think much of wasting their last few days together choosing furniture.
‘Tell you what,’ Tommy said, ‘let’s have fish and chips for lunch to celebrate.’
‘Chip!’ Dora said rapturously.
So that was settled, although Emmeline said she didn’t know what Ernest would say if he could see how they were all going on.
Later that afternoon, when Octavia and Tommy were lying relaxed and easy in their comfortable feather bed, she asked him if he was really going to spend time rushing about buying furniture. ‘We’ve very little time left now,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to waste a minute.’
‘No more do I, little Tikki Tavy,’ he said, kissing her hair. ‘And no more we shall. That was just a cover to fool your cousin. Once we’re all back in London I want them to think I’m fully occupied. Don’t worry. I’ve been to Waring & Gillows and picked what I wanted and they’re going to deal with it. And I’ve hired the decorators. It’s all taken care of.’
It sounded decidedly civilised – if a trifle devious. ‘Oh, Tommy,’ she said. ‘I do love you. And I shall miss you.’
‘Don’t let’s think about that now,’ he said. ‘Time enough when the time comes.’
But it was rushing down upon her like an express train, all unpleasant noise and obscuring steam and unnecessary speed. In four days their interlude in Eastbourne would be over and she would be back at home; in just over a fortnight he would be on the boat train and on his way back to Europe. There were moments even in those last few joyous days by the sea when she thought she couldn’t bear it.
In their last week, they spent as much time as they dared in his grand new flat, and when the final miserable day arrived she went to Victoria station to see him off and kissed him lovingly as he leant out of the window of the train. It was certainly improper and she was probably making a spectacle of herself but she was too anguished to care.
‘I’ll write to you,’ he called as the train creaked him away.
She ran along the platform, so that she could keep sight of him for as long as possible. ‘Every day!’ she called.
‘Promise,’ he called back. ‘See it wet, see it dry.’
His first letter arrived the very next morning, written in Calais and at length, telling her how much he loved her and how much he missed her and promising that he would cadge a few days leave as soon as he could. ‘I might not be able to get back to London,’ he wrote. ‘But I could wangle a day or two in Paris and you could meet me there, couldn’t you?’
Oh yes, she could. She would. And wrote back by return of post to tell him so. Then, and rather guiltily, she walked to the WSPU shop to find out what was happening to the prisoners in Winson Green. She’d never written that letter to Mrs Emsworth and now she felt ashamed of herself for such an oversight. It wasn’t like her to forget things.
What she heard was horrific. ‘They’d gone on hunger strike,’ Betty Transom reported, ‘and apparently the Home Office decided they’d got to be fed whether they would or not, so this is what the authorities are doing. They tie them to a chair and push a rubber tube down their throats and pour the food down it.’
Octavia was appalled. It was disgusting, obscene. ‘What sort of food?’
‘Soup, I suppose,’ Betty said. ‘Mushy things. It would have to be, wouldn’t it, or they’d choke them.’
‘It’s barbaric,’ Octavia said. The mere thought of it was making her heave. ‘Bad enough to think of such things but to actually go ahead and do them. We’re supposed to be one of the most civilised countries in the world and we do this! Words fail me.’ But now that she’d started asking questions, she went on until she’d heard the whole story. ‘Why were they on hunger strike?’ she asked.
Mrs Emsworth knew the answer to that. ‘They’d been downgraded,’ she said, ‘from category A to category C, which means no books or writing paper, as you know, among other things. So they made a formal protest, pointing out that they were political prisoners and should be treated accordingly and when that was ignored, they refused to eat.’
‘And now they’re being tortured,’ Betty said. ‘Because that’s what it amounts to, doesn’t it? The group in Birmingham say they’re really ill.’
‘I’m sure they are,’ Octavia said. ‘We must write and tell them how much we support them and admire them.’
‘We write every other day,’ Mrs Emsworth said and there was rebuke in her tone. ‘We’ve done it ever since they were sentenced.’
‘Of course,’ Octavia said, and was ashamed of herself again, thinking, I was speaking out of turn. Naturally they’ve written. As I would have done if I’d been here. ‘Do you know when they are likely to be released?’ she asked, trying to be helpfully practical. ‘Perhaps we should send a deputation to greet them. What do you think?’
They arrived holding flowers and wearing their most impressive clothes, neat and bright in the sooty darkness outside the prison gates. A pervasive rain was falling and the October sky was wintry.
‘I hope they’ll be on time,’ Betty Transom said. ‘My feet are like ice already.’
But the appointed hour arrived and passed and nothing happened. They were joined by two more groups of women and a quiet couple with a pale young man in tow, who arrived in a cab which was told to wait, and they all stood together on the cobbles, side by side for warmth, their breath pluming before them in the chill air.
‘Why are prisons so grim?’ Betty Transom said, looking at the blackened walls and that forbidding oak gate.
‘They’re designed that way,’ Octavia told her. ‘They’re supposed to deter us.’
And then suddenly a small door in the forbidding gate was inched open and there they were: four pale women, holding on to one another and advancing towards them, very, very slowly. They gave them a cheer and walked towards them equally slowly with their flowers outstretched and offered. The pale young man was the first to reach them and now Octavia saw that he had a notebook in his hand and realised that he was a reporter. ‘Mrs Ainsworth?’ he said. ‘Mrs Laura Ainsworth?’
One of the prisoners detached herself from her friends and answered him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am she. I haven’t the energy to stand for long but if you would care to come home with me I will tell you all you need to know.’ She was trembling but impressively calm.
I hope I can behave like that when my turn comes, Octavia thought, because it would come, sooner or later. She couldn’t put it off forever. But the sight and smell of the prison was deterring her where she stood and she wasn’t at all sure how resolute she would manage to be when she was put to the test. Or how strong.
That night when she was back home after her two long journeys, she wrote a letter to Tommy describing everything she’d seen and analysing everything she’d felt. It was rather a disappointment when his answering letter hardly mentioned what she’d said. But she forgave him when she read the PS.
‘I shall be in Paris on Saturday week, for three days. I told you I’d swing it, didn’t I? Write and let me know what train you are catching and I’ll be at the station with bells on. Can’t wait to see you again. Txxxx’
To see him again, and so soon! It was wonderful news. Oh, wonderful! But it presented her with a problem. A trip to Paris had to be explained to her parents and she could hardly tell them she was going to visit Tommy, much less that they were going to stay in a hotel together. They were broadminded, but not that broadminded. She would have to think about what she told them and choose her words very carefully. But however she phrased it, the explanation was bound to be a lie. And oh, she did so hate the thought that she would have to tell lies. This is what comes of loving someone, she thought. It makes you dishonest. Or perhaps I ought to say, this is what comes of loving someone in a society that won’t accept a loving couple unless they are married. If you ever heard of anything so illogical.
In the end she told them she wanted to go to France to meet up with a group of suffragettes who were staying in Paris. Her mother was most concerned.
‘All that way, Tavy,’ she queried, ‘on your own? Do you think that’s wise?’
‘I shall be met at the station,’ Octavia said. That much was true at any rate.
‘So you may be, but it’s a long journey. What do you think, J-J?’
Fortunately her father thought it was a capital idea. ‘Paris is no distance these days,’ he said. ‘You go, my dear, and enjoy yourself. Just don’t go getting arrested.’
‘No, Pa,’ she said, bowing her head in mock obedience. ‘It’s not that sort of meeting.’
‘No,’ he said, grinning at her. He had a really devilish grin sometimes. ‘I rather thought it wasn’t.’
So she travelled to Paris on her own and was met at the Gare du Nord by a beaming Tommy, who pulled her into his arms and kissed her, there and then, out in the street and nobody seemed to mind. He’d been right about that, she thought. But then he was right about so many things, her dear, dear Tommy. They spent the next three days visiting the city, arm in arm and stopping to kiss whenever the spirit moved them – as it often did – and the next four nights making luxurious love. By the time they parted again at the Gare du Nord, she felt as if she’d been with him for weeks.
‘When can we come here again?’ she asked, as she climbed into the train.
‘As soon as I can wangle it,’ he promised.
‘I do love you,’ she said.
‘Likewise,’ he told her.
I could have stayed here forever, she thought, as the train rattled her through the Parisian suburbs. But there was work to be done in London and she couldn’t and shouldn’t avoid it, much though she wanted to at that moment.
The debate about violent protest had been fanned into a rage by the forcible feeding of the hunger strikers. In October the now renowned Laura Ainsworth took the prison authorities to the High Court and although she lost her case, it was rumoured that there was going to be an enquiry into the whole business of force-feeding. In November, a group of militants broke into the lord mayor’s banquet and threw stones at the assembled worthies.
‘It is the wrong tactic,’ Octavia said, over and over again at one meeting after another. ‘We lose public sympathy every time we are violent and we need public sympathy if we are to prevail. I know the authorities are being extremely violent to us, but we should show our supporters a better way than throwing stones and hurling insults. We must go on pressing for proper democratic change, and that must come eventually through a bill in Parliament. We cannot bully our enemies into giving us what we want.’
Many agreed with her, but they all knew that something would have to be done to persuade the men who made the law and drafted the bills and none of them could think what it could possibly be. Mr Keir Hardy, MP, was the staunchest of allies but there were times when he seemed to be the only one. ‘He’s a voice in the wilderness,’ they said sadly.
If it hadn’t been for her infrequent visits to Paris, that winter would have been a very difficult time. She spent four days there at the end of November, when mist rose from the surface of the Seine and the city was dank with rain. And she was there for nearly a week in the middle of December, when the streets were brilliantly lit, the shops were crammed with Christmas treats and the pavements crowded with elegant shoppers, the women snuggled into fur-trimmed coats and hats like Russian Cossacks, the men in well-cut overcoats and leather gloves, escorting them in and out of shops and hotels, gallantly attentive. She was glad to be in their company. ‘They look so cultivated,’ she said to Tommy.
‘Like us!’ he said, putting his arm round her as they walked along. ‘You, my lovely Tikki Tavy, are the most cultivated woman in the city.’
His lightness of tone sustained her. When she was with him, she could joke and flirt, as if the world were an easy, comfortable place, and no one had ever thrown stones or smashed windows or been spat at or force-fed. It was only in London that she had to be serious all the time. And as the months went by there was more and more to be serious about.
The New Year brought a piece of rather alarming news. It was tucked away in the middle pages of the newspaper and she wouldn’t have seen it at all if she hadn’t been scanning the pages for a report on the latest WSPU meeting.
‘Britain could face a serious shortage of horses should war break out, it was reported yesterday. The National Horse Supply Association was told that 170,000 would be needed immediately on the outbreak of hostilities, the same number being replaced every six months. Germany and Austria spent £200,000 each annually on horse breeding, Britain less than £5,000.’
‘Have you read this, Pa?’ she said, passing the paper across the breakfast table.
He glanced at it and said he had. ‘There was something similar in The Times yesterday.’
‘It sounds as if they are expecting a war,’ she said. ‘That’s not right surely.’
‘We live in an age of empire, little one,’ he said, ‘and empires are belligerent by their very nature. They are won by armed force, don’t forget, and maintained by occupying armies.’
‘But there’s no reason for us to want to fight anyone now,’ she persisted. ‘Surely to goodness. We’re the biggest empire in the world.’
‘All the more reason,’ he told her. ‘The biggest empire has the most to lose.’
It was a sobering thought. I shall write to Tommy, she decided and see what he has to say about it.
It upset her that he seemed to agree with her father. ‘I daresay we shall put up a fight sooner or later,’ he wrote. ‘Not to worry your head about it. If it comes, it comes. I shan’t be in Paris until May but then I’ve got a whole fortnight’s leave. Good or what? I’ll take you to Versailles and show you the Sun King’s palace.’
Which he did and very charming she found it. ‘The French are so civilised,’ she said. ‘They’re not talking about a war coming.’
‘Everybody’s talking about a war coming,’ Tommy told her lightly. ‘You should hear them in the embassy. It’s all they ever do talk about. That and the warring tribes. I can’t tell you how boring it is. Don’t let’s waste our time on it.’
Fortunately the newspapers gave them something else to talk about the very next day. King Edward VII was dead. ‘Well, how about that!’ Tommy said. ‘I hope they let us home for the funeral. I shall put on a black tie and look sorrowful and ask them. It’s about time we got back to our flat, don’t you think?’
The black tie and sorrowful expression paid off. This time it was a month’s leave and he came straight back to London to enjoy it. ‘The king can die any time he wants,’ he said to Octavia on their first afternoon in the flat. ‘It suits me to a T.’
‘I’m sure he did it to suit you,’ she teased. ‘All the papers keep saying what a diplomat he was.’
‘Come to bed,’ he said.
It was a summer of good meals, family picnics on the river with Cyril and Em and the three children, frequent and cheerful visits to the theatre, occasional sorties out into the country on their bicycles, and all of it spiced with the most passionate and satisfying lovemaking. By this time Em was speaking quite openly about them ‘walking out’ but Octavia didn’t mind. She explained to her cousin, privately of course, that she and Tommy had got to be patient because they couldn’t marry until he’d finished his apprenticeship and naturally Em passed on all her news to her mother, who naturally passed it on in her turn to her sister Amy.
‘I knew there was something in the wind,’ Amy said to J-J. ‘All those letters he keeps writing. And now he’s home there’s never a day goes by when they’re not together. He’ll be speaking to you soon, J-J, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Her husband made a grimace and returned to his newspaper.
‘Maybe I’ll say something to Tavy,’ Amy said. ‘When she comes in tonight.’
But when Octavia came in that night she was bursting with such good news she couldn’t wait to tell them what it was. ‘They’ve formed a conciliation committee, Mama,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Who have?’ Amy asked. ‘What for?’
‘Why, the MPs,’ her daughter said. ‘They’re going to draft a women’s suffrage bill and Keir Hardy’s going to steer it through the Commons. It’s going to be called the Conciliation Bill. We’re going to get the vote at last!’
‘I couldn’t get a word in edgeways,’ Amy said to J-J as they were preparing for bed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so excited.’
The excitement was short-lived. Despite Keir Hardy’s most passionate efforts the bill was defeated. And so was the second a year later, and the third, when Em was expecting her fourth baby, a year after that. The movement was more demoralised than it had ever been and Octavia more angry. It was no surprise to her when a group of furious women stormed into Oxford Street on a mad March day with hammers hidden in their muffs and smashed as many plate-glass windows as they could before they were arrested. ‘I know so exactly how they feel,’ she wrote to Tommy. ‘I never thought I’d say this but I could do it myself.’
But of course the result of their actions was a police raid on the headquarters of the WSPU and the arrest of Emily Pankhurst and the Pethick Lawrences. They were tried for conspiracy and sentenced to nine months.
‘Sometimes I think the whole world has gone mad,’ Octavia wrote, ‘for such people to be sent to prison as if they were common criminals is tantamount to lunacy. To say nothing of the way the government is treating the miners and the dockers. They are making it a crime to ask for a living wage. Is it any wonder there are riots?’
The one bright moment in that crazy spring was the arrival of Em’s fourth baby. It was another little boy, born on March 20th and as pale and fragile as his brother Eddie. She called him Richard and even though she was wearied by his birth was instantly enamoured of him. ‘Dear little man!’
As there was no hope of seeing Tommy again until the summer, Octavia spent a lot of time with Emmeline and her brood during the next three months. Dora was now a pretty little girl who had her fifth birthday four days after her new brother’s arrival and was given a special party by her mother because she’d been so good. Eddie was still pale and undersized for a child who was nearly four and had a decidedly nervous air but he loved his Aunty Tavy and crept happily into her lap for stories whenever she appeared. And as to baby Edith, she was so plump and cheerful it was a joy to see her.
‘Four babies,’ Octavia said to her cousin, who was sitting on her sofa with the new baby across her knees and Edith cuddled against her side. ‘You’re like the old woman in the shoe, Em.’
‘Who had so many children she didn’t know what to do,’ Emmeline laughed. ‘I feel like her sometimes, especially when they’re all crying. But I love them so much I wouldn’t be without them.’
‘They were your dream,’ Octavia said.
‘And the cause was yours?’ Emmeline said. ‘How oddly dreams turn out, don’t they? They seem so easy and straightforward when you’re young but when they come true everything’s so complicated it’s a different matter altogether.’
‘Mine is a bit of a nightmare sometimes,’ Octavia admitted. They were talking so openly to one another that a confession was possible. ‘We’ve been campaigning for such a long time and we’re no nearer to getting the vote than we were at the beginning.’
‘Don’t you ever want to give up?’ Emmeline asked, stroking the baby’s downy head. ‘Leave it all behind you and marry Tommy.’
‘No,’ Octavia said. She was quite certain about it, bad though things were. ‘We must go on now. There’s nothing else we can do.’
‘Even if it means being sent to prison and force-fed?’
Octavia’s heart contracted at the thought but her answer was steadfast. ‘Even if it means that.’
‘You’re very brave,’ Emmeline said. ‘I don’t think I could stand it. It must be terribly painful.’
‘You’ve had four babies,’ Octavia said. ‘Now that’s what I’d call brave. And painful.’
‘Having babies is natural,’ Emmeline said sagely. ‘It is painful – very painful, I’ll grant you that – but when it’s over you soon forget it and you’ve got a baby to show for it. Being force-fed isn’t natural by any stretch of the imagination. That’s the difference. I couldn’t stand somebody doing that to me.’
And I will have to, Octavia thought. I can’t go on avoiding action forever.