1^st May, 1912.

Dear Frances,

Thanks awfully for your excellent letter. I like the sound of your new English mistress. She sounds much more fun than Professor Shields who teaches us English and French and who has eyes like a hawk and ears like a bat – I mean as powerful as a bat’s; they look perfectly normal. She’s about thirty and quite pretty really, but you can never get away with talking in class or passing notes. I must admit that apart from her magical observational powers, Professor Shields is all right. She’s not as bad as Sister Augustine, who taught us last year and has the most boring voice in the world. Though it’s quite hard to think about school at all at the moment, when I have found out the truth about Phyllis and Maggie. Yes, I know all (or at least, I think I do) and it really is quite shocking. It turns out they are revolutionaries – well, sort of. They are SUFFRAGETTES!

Yes! Actual suffragettes! At least Phyllis definitely is, and Maggie supports her. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before (though neither did Nora, so it wasn’t just me being dim). But when I look back it all makes sense. Phyllis may not have seemed interested in politics, but she definitely has strong feelings about women being able to do things that men think they shouldn’t. Look at how she insisted on going to university. And she got that bicycle a few years ago even though Father Thomas (our uncle who is a priest) told Father that women on bicycles were a shocking disgrace and that the next thing we knew Phyllis would be wearing trousers and smoking a cigar (she has not done either yet, as far as I know, but who knows, maybe she will? It feels as though anything is possible now).

So in a way the news that Phyllis is a suffragette is not surprising. But still, I can’t help being a bit stunned by the whole thing. I mean, wanting to go to college doesn’t automatically mean you want the vote, and even wanting a vote doesn’t automatically mean you’re actually going to go to meetings and chalk slogans on pavements and march around wearing a poster-board telling people about it and all those other things that suffragettes seem to do. Lots of people want something and never do anything about it. But Phyllis is definitely doing something about it, and Maggie is helping her. I can hardly take it all in.

Here’s how I found out. It was this afternoon – though it seems like much longer ago. We’d just had tea and I was in the dining room finishing my Latin exercises (Ovid this time, going on about his last night in Rome). Mother was in the drawing room, playing Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca at top volume, which is always a sign that she is in a good mood; I could hear it rattling through the wooden doors that divide the drawing room from the dining room. Latin poetry is, as you know, terribly boring, so what with Ovid and the Mozart I couldn’t concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time and found myself staring out the window. Which is how I saw Phyllis carefully shutting the back door and making her way stealthily towards the back gate. And instantly I knew what I had to do. Ovid would just have to wait (he can wait forever as far as I’m concerned, though in this case I did have to finish it when I got home).

Now, Frances, you might think that what I did next was very sly and sneakish. And to be honest it probably was. I know I have been behaving in quite a sneakish way recently. But anyway, I did it. I leapt to my feet, ran into the hall, grabbed my coat (which I had left on the bottom of the stairs rather than hanging it on the rack) cried, ‘Mother, I’m going to borrow a school book from Nora,’ and, before she could say anything (or even let me know that she’d heard me), I raced out the back door (Maggie was washing up in the scullery, so I didn’t have to lie to her, too, about where I was going), through the back gate and ran down the lane. And while I may not be much good at drill and dancing, you might recall that I was always jolly good at races. And so Phyllis hadn’t even reached the end of our road by the time I emerged from the lane.

I didn’t want her to see me so I kept my distance (actually, I didn’t have much choice in the matter because I was so short of breath I could barely walk. I may be good at winning races but only when they are very short ones). Anyway, I could breathe enough to follow Phyllis as she made her way onto the main road. For a moment, I thought she might cross the road and get a tram, which would have scuppered all my plans because I had no money in my pocket for the fare, but she didn’t. She started walking towards town.

I’m never, ever allowed walk into town on my own. Father isn’t particularly keen on Phyllis doing it, which was probably why she was sneaking out the back door. Of course, I walk to school with Nora, though Maggie collects Julia, who gets off earlier. If Aunt Josephine had her way Maggie would have to go back again to collect me, but Mother says that’s ridiculous because it would take up far too much time and that I’m quite all right with Nora.

It’s true that between our house and Sackville Street there are a lot of streets that are, as Aunt Josephine would say, ‘not at all suitable for girls like you’. But I was so keen to find out what Phyllis was up to, I kept going. It wasn’t so terrifying really, although after we passed Eccles Street I saw more and more children (and even some men and women) with no shoes on their feet. A few ragged boys called something rude about my hair ribbons as I went past, but I ignored them.

I followed Phyllis down one side of Rutland Square and onto Sackville Street. The street was full of people, and for a worrying moment I thought I might lose her in the crowd. But, luckily, she was wearing one of Kathleen’s ludicrous hats with what looked like the top of a pineapple on it, so she was easy to find in the crowd. She went all the way down the street, through all the flower-sellers and past the pillar, then eventually turned left onto Eden Quay. She went down towards the Custom House, and I started to get a bit nervous then because going into town was one thing, but it was another thing to go towards the docks, which was where Phyllis seemed to be heading now. If I’d stood out walking past the streets where the tenements were, I’d stand out even more now, and so would Phyllis.

Then, when she reached the end of the quay across the road from the Custom House, Phyllis stopped outside a big building with freshly painted letters on it that revealed it was the headquarters of a trade union. I realised that she’d met a lady of about Mother’s age, a woman wearing a green coat. She was tall and thin and had a lot of light brown hair piled up under a large straw hat. I wondered if she was the same green-coat-wearer I’d seen giving Phyllis that bundle a few weeks ago; then I was quite sure she was, because she gave Phyllis another bundle of what I could clearly see were newspapers or magazines. Then the two of them crossed the road to the Custom House. Of course I followed them, even though at this stage I felt more than a bit scared AND I nearly got run over by a bus when I was crossing the road.

Just before I scurried out of the way of the bus I could see a small crowd gathered outside the Custom House and at first I thought I might blend in with them. But soon I could see that they were all what Mother and Father would call ‘working men’ and a fourteen-year-old girl in shiny shoes and a new coat was not going to blend in with them at all. But then, neither would Phyllis (though you could argue that she wouldn’t fit in anywhere in that ridiculous hat). What on earth was going on?

As I got nearer, I could see what the men were gathered around. There was a woman standing on some sort of a box, and she was making a speech. She was quite young, in her thirties, I suppose, and was wearing a very nice coat and a pair of spectacles. There was a green, white and orange rosette on the lapel of her coat. I got a few odd looks from the men as I made my way through the small crowd, trying to avoid Phyllis, who was now standing right next to the box. But no one said anything to me until one man turned to his friend and said, ‘They’ve even got young ones out fighting for them now!’ But he didn’t sound angry or even disapproving. He almost sounded impressed.

Now I could hear what the woman was saying.

‘We women are thinking, working creatures just as men are,’ she said. ‘And yet we are treated like children. If we work, we must pay our taxes, but we get no say in how those taxes are spent. We are told from girlhood to defer to men in all things.’

I suddenly thought of Harry taking all the good bits of chicken.

‘But we have our own needs too, and we have our own voice,’ cried the woman. ‘We are not here to take anything that belongs to men. But to demand what is rightfully ours too – the right to have our say. The right to vote!’

‘Bleeding lot of good ladies having the vote,’ yelled a man standing near me, ‘when a working man like myself doesn’t even have a say.’ And I remembered that men who don’t have a certain amount of property can’t vote either.

‘We women want the vote on the same terms as men – whatever those terms may be,’ said the woman on the chair. I could see that the rosette on her coat was emblazoned with the words ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’. ‘And if those terms change with the Home Rule bill, then they should be applied to women too.’

I was in a bit of a daze. Was this the heart of the mystery? Was Phyllis – and Maggie too, I supposed, as they were clearly in it together – not a Fenian revolutionary, but a suffragette?

I don’t know how much you know about suffragettes. I must admit that until last night, I had a very different picture of them. Whenever I heard grown-up people talking about them, it always seemed to be in a disapproving way. I remember Father looking at a picture in a magazine and saying that if the women really wanted to prove they deserved the vote they shouldn’t be making an exhibition of themselves marching around in poster-boards. Mother hadn’t said anything, but she hadn’t disagreed with him either. And I do remember hearing Aunt Josephine holding forth to Mother about ‘silly women who should be at home with their children – if they have any’. She said they were ‘just aping Englishwomen by shouting and screaming for the vote.’ She always says that women can have a say in society by guiding and advising their men, which has always seemed a rather feeble way of having a say to me. I can’t remember what Mother said to any of this. All I remember is that Aunt Josephine made being a suffragette sound like a silly, childish thing, a lot of foolish women having a big tantrum.

But the woman on the box wasn’t silly at all. She was simply marvellous. Some men made rude remarks (at least I’m pretty sure they were rude, I couldn’t understand some of them), but some seemed genuinely interested and asked lots of questions. After a while, I forgot all about Phyllis and just listened to the lady as she talked about how men and women have an equal stake in the world, and asked why women were being shut out of power (And the good bits of chicken, I thought). She talked about all the intelligent, brave women whose gifts were never used ‘because they had no outlet’. She made me think about things I’d never thought of before.

Most of the time when I hear grown-up people talking about politics it’s about Home Rule and independence, and it never seems to have much to do with real life. But what the woman said made me think that maybe politics could have something to do with real life. It even has something to do with us girls all giving the good bits of dinner to Harry and Father, and with us darning their socks, and with Phyllis having to fight to be allowed go to university when Harry took it for granted that he was going. Why should Mother not have a vote when Harry is going to have one in five years? And why didn’t we ever talk about things like that? Maybe because we all took it for granted that boys deserved certain things and girls deserved other, less interesting things.

When the lady finished, quite a lot of the men clapped, though there were also a few boos. I clapped as hard as I could. And then I remembered Phyllis. She was standing near the chair, holding a stack of magazines. A man, better dressed than most of the others, went up to her and handed her a coin and she gave him a copy of the magazine. He walked past me as he left her and I could see that the name of the magazine was Votes for Women. I was just about to sneak away and get home as fast as I could when Phyllis saw me. She froze for a second and then she stormed over to me, her face furious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry, even that time she came home and found Nora and me dressing up in her lace collars.

‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed. ‘Did you follow me? Actually, don’t bother answering that. You must have done, you horrid little sneak.’

I could feel myself blushing, because of course she was right.

‘I knew you were hiding something,’ I said, but even as I said the words I knew how feeble they sounded.

‘It isn’t any of your business,’ said Phyllis. ‘And you shouldn’t be in a place like this. It isn’t at all suitable.’ She almost sounded like Aunt Josephine.

‘Well, neither should you, if it comes to that,’ I said.

‘You’re not going to tell Father and Mother, are you?’ said Phyllis. ‘You’d better not, you sneaking worm.’

‘Of course I won’t!’ I cried. ‘Oh Phyllis, I know I shouldn’t have been following you, but I really don’t want to get you into trouble. Honestly I don’t.’

Phyllis’s face softened, but not very much.

‘I suppose I’d better take you home,’ she said. She called over to another girl who was also holding a stack of magazines.

‘Mabel,’ said Phyllis, ‘would you mind awfully selling my batch? My sister’s turned up and I can’t send her home on her own.’

‘Of course,’ said Mabel, who was a tall girl of about Phyllis’s age with fair-ish hair and a nice, jolly face. Phyllis gave her the magazines as well as a small purse.

‘I only sold one,’ she said apologetically. ‘And I bought one for myself.’

‘People never buy much at the Wednesday meetings,’ said Mabel. ‘Wasn’t Mrs. Joyce wonderful?’

Mrs. Joyce must have been the woman who gave the speech. Phyllis agreed that she had been wonderful, said goodbye to Mabel and then, without saying anything to me, she grabbed my hand and we headed back down Eden Quay. She didn’t say a word until we reached Sackville Street, and then she turned to me abruptly and said, ‘Do you have any money?’

I shook my head.

‘Wonderful,’ said Phyllis. ‘I’ll have to pay for your tram fare, then.’

We got a tram straight away on Sackville Street and sat down next to each other in silence. Phyllis was holding the magazine she’d bought, and I looked at it curiously. I had never heard of a suffragette magazine before. Father sometimes gets Blackwood’s Magazine or The Strand, and girls at school sometimes bring in ladies’ magazines full of dramatic stories and things about clothes and what’s going on in London. The nuns don’t approve of them so the girls have to hide them and pass them around secretly. And then there are all the religious magazines, which are full of stories about saints and missionaries. I couldn’t imagine that a suffragette magazine would be much like that. Or like the ladies’ magazines either.

Neither of us said anything until we were halfway home. Phyllis looked too angry to speak and I felt too guilty. But eventually I said, ‘Phyllis?’

For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to answer me but eventually she said, ‘What?’

‘How long have you been …’ She was looking at me so fiercely I almost couldn’t go on. ‘Doing this,’ I finished quickly.

‘I’m surprised you don’t know already,’ said Phyllis, tossing her head back, ‘seeing as though you appear to have been tracking my movements.’

One of her hairpins fell out. This has happened a lot since Phyllis started putting her hair up, because she has the usual Carberry unruly locks. I didn’t dare point it out this time, though.

‘Why were you going out the back way?’ I said. ‘I saw you sneak out a few weeks ago too.’

‘Because the back lane is a short cut,’ said Phyllis. ‘And I was running late.’

I hadn’t thought of that.

‘But you climbed out the window the other week,’ I said.

‘That was because Mother knew Kathleen was sick and she and Aunt Josephine would have asked a lot of stupid questions if they thought I was going off on my own,’ said Phyllis. ‘And I couldn’t go out of the front or the back door without passing one of them. How long have you been spying on me, anyway?’

‘Oh, don’t be like that, Phyllis,’ I said. ‘I honestly am awfully sorry. And I really am interested too.’

Phyllis looked at me.

‘Are you?’ she said.

‘Oh, I am,’ I said. ‘That woman’s speech was very good.’

‘I didn’t think you were interested in this sort of thing,’ said Phyllis.

‘Neither did I,’ I said. ‘But I suppose I’ve never heard anything like it before.’

‘I’m surprised you haven’t,’ said Phyllis. ‘Some of the teachers in that school …’

‘They’ve never said anything about it to me,’ I said. ‘Now do, please, tell me how you got started. Being a suffragette, I mean.’

‘I don’t particularly like that word,’ said Phyllis. ‘Lots of us use it, of course. But it’s what the Antis call us. They invented it.’

I must admit that I rather liked the word and I still do.

‘Well, how did you get started with votes for women, then?’ I said. We were on Dorset Street now. Soon we’d be home, and who knew whether Phyllis would say anything then?

‘Kathleen’s aunt,’ said Phyllis. ‘Agnes.’

‘The tall one with the curly hair?’ I said. I’d met her at a Christmas party in Kathleen’s house last year. She had lovely clothes.

‘That’s her,’ said Phyllis. ‘Kathleen and I went for tea with her a few months ago and I was talking about doing my degree and how strongly I felt about, you know, girls being able to do the same things as boys. And she lent me a book.’

‘A book about being a suffragette?’ I said. ‘I mean … about votes for women.’

‘A novel,’ said Phyllis. ‘By a woman called Constance Maud. It’s called No Surrender. It’s about suffragettes in England but one of them is Irish. Well, she’s awfully posh but she’s Irish all right. Anyway, it made me … I don’t know. It made me see things differently. It made me notice things I’d never noticed before.’

Like me listening to Mrs. Joyce at the Custom House, I thought.

‘And once I started noticing,’ Phyllis went on, ‘I couldn’t stop noticing. So the next time I met Agnes at Kathleen’s house I told her how much I liked the book and how interesting the whole suffrage question was. And she looked at me and said, “Do you want to do something about it?” And I did.’

Soon, Phyllis told me, she was reading more books and articles and pamphlets about suffragettes (I know she doesn’t approve of the word but she still uses it quite a lot). She started buying Votes for Women, which is an English magazine. There’s a newsagent on Great Britain Street where you can buy it. And then she started going to these outdoor meetings. Apparently there is one almost every Wednesday and Saturday. The weekend ones are in the Phoenix Park. She even took part in a poster parade a few weeks ago when John Redmond (you must know him, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party) was having some sort of meeting. And sometimes she and Kathleen go into town and chalk suffragette slogans and notices about meetings in big letters on the pavement.

‘But how does Maggie come into it?’ I asked.

‘She found my copy of Votes for Women,’ said Phyllis. ‘And when I asked her not to tell Mother about it, she said she wouldn’t dream of it. And we sort of looked at each other for a minute, and then Maggie said that she was very interested in the cause herself but she never had time to do much about it. Her sister is a trade unionist, you know.’

‘Jenny?’ I said, surprised. ‘I didn’t.’ Maggie’s sister comes to visit her sometimes and we’ve all known her for years.

‘Well, she is, and she supports the cause too,’ said Phyllis. ‘So I’ve been passing leaflets and things to Maggie and she’s been passing some of them on to Jenny.’

And that was when we had to get off the tram. Once we were off, Phyllis seemed to remember that she was angry with me and barely said a word all the way home, even though I tried to ask her more questions.

Oh no, I can hear Mother coming up the stairs and I should have been asleep over an hour ago. And I haven’t even said my prayers yet. I’ll write more tomorrow.

 

 

Thursday

 

I don’t know why I bothered turning the light off last night because I hardly slept a wink. I kept thinking about everything Phyllis had said. When I went down to breakfast I wanted to talk to Maggie about it all, but I didn’t have a chance because she was so busy. I hadn’t been able to say anything to her last night because Mother and Father were absolutely furious that I’d stayed away for so long.

‘You know perfectly well that you’re not allowed run off like that,’ said Mother.

‘I told you I was going to Nora’s,’ I said.

‘I couldn’t tell what you were yelling,’ said Mother. ‘And you shouldn’t have stayed away for two hours anyway.’

I had to go to bed without any supper, even though I told them that Nora and I had been practising Latin verbs (which of course was a lie, but Mother didn’t know that. If I had actually been practising Latin verbs, it would have been terribly unfair to punish me for it). But I know more punishments will be forthcoming.

Harry, of course, made his usual stupid remarks, this time all about how girls aren’t able to tell the time. He is not nearly as funny as he thinks he is.

‘We can tell the time perfectly well,’ I said. ‘We were just so engrossed in our Latin studies that we didn’t notice it.’ At this stage, I’d told the lie about me and Nora studying Latin so often I almost believed it myself, which is a bit worrying now I come to think about it. I reminded Harry that my school gets some of the best Intermediate Certificate results in the country, including maths. But he just laughed and said, ‘Best results for a girls’ school, which doesn’t mean much’, and strolled off.

Sometimes I really could kill him. And I thought again about what the lady at the meeting had said about men and women being treated differently.

Anyway. Even though I am still in disgrace today, I was very much looking forward to telling Nora that I had solved the mystery of Phyllis. Dreadful Harry walked us to school this morning so I couldn’t say anything to her then, and as soon as he left us we bumped into our friend Stella. I didn’t get a chance to reveal all until we were in our first class of the day, French, when I passed a note to Nora, saying ‘PHYLLIS IS A SUFFRAGETTE!!!” As I said, passing notes is always risky in Professor Shields’s French class because of her supernatural hearing and hawk-like sight, but I really couldn’t keep it in any longer. I scribbled the words on a scrap of paper and passed it to Nora, who was sitting at the next desk. She looked very surprised when she read it and as soon as Professor Shields turned back to the board again, she looked at me and mouthed ‘How?’

But before I could write another note, Professor Shields whipped her head round like a cobra. It was clear that she’d noticed something. And she wasn’t the only one. Grace Molyneaux was sitting behind Nora and she had definitely seen both the note passing and Nora’s reaction to it.

‘Is everything all right there, Miss Cantwell?’ asked Professor Shields.

‘Yes, Professor Shields,’ said Nora. And I didn’t dare look over at her for the rest of the class. It was very boring. We were practising verbs and learning how to say things like ‘I have sold the pen of my aunt. I am selling the pen of my aunt. I will sell the pen of my aunt’ in French. I don’t know why, but we never seem to learn how to say any useful things in French class (or rather en français, as they say in France. I suppose I have learned something). If I ever tried to sell the pen of Aunt Josephine, she’d probably have me arrested for theft.

Finally, after half an hour of talking about the tables of our uncles and the dresses of our mothers, French class was over and Professor Shields left the room, but Grace pounced on me before I chance to say anything to Nora.

‘I hate to be a bore,’ she said, untruthfully. ‘But you know you shouldn’t be passing notes in class.’ She turned to Nora. ‘Or receiving them. You do need to concentrate on your French.’

‘I can concentrate perfectly well, thank you,’ said Nora politely.

‘I’m sure you can,’ said Grace. ‘But you know Aunt Catherine wouldn’t like it. And besides, it’s terribly distracting for everyone else. How am I going to win the Middle Grade Cup if you’re throwing bits of paper around when Professor Shields is trying to teach us?’

Grace’s Aunt Catherine is Nora’s mother. Poor, poor Nora. Not only does she have to worry about Grace sneaking on her to teachers, but she also has to worry about her sneaking to Nora’s parents as well.

‘I could barely concentrate on my verbs,’ said Gertie Hayden. She’s not as bad as her great chum Grace, but she’s still pretty bad. Whenever Grace does something annoying, Gertie backs her up, whether she agrees with her or not.

In this case, we knew Gertie didn’t give a fig about concentrating on verbs. All she cares about is hockey and tennis. Sometimes I think that the only reason Grace is friends with Gertie is that Gertie poses no threat to Grace’s ambition to win the cup.

Nora gave them both a haughty look. She is surprisingly good at looking like a grand old lady for a short red-haired girl from Drumcondra.

‘Then why didn’t you tell Professor Shields?’ she asked.

Grace gave a sort of tinkling laugh.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I’m not a sneak.’

‘Really?’ said Nora. ‘You do surprise me. Come on, Mollie.’

And she linked her arm through mine (which we are also not supposed to do, because the nuns don’t really approve of close friendships between girls. They say they are ‘unhealthy’ though I really can’t see why. It’s not as though Nora or I have germs).

Grace smiled at us in a pitying sort of way, which was extremely irritating, and then she and Gertie went over to May Sullivan, who is a new-ish girl who sometimes goes about with Grace and Gertie (presumably because she hasn’t seen through Grace’s sugary sweet act, unlike me and Nora who’ve known her for years and years).

As Nora and I marched away to the science room for our next class, I said, ‘You know, it’s not that I think you were wrong, but maybe we shouldn’t antagonise Grace.’

‘Why not?’ said Nora. ‘She deserves it when she talks like that. Going on about Mother and telling us we shouldn’t be passing notes!’

‘True,’ I said. ‘But maybe we should try and avoid her wrath at the moment. Especially if …’ I trailed off.

‘Especially if what?’ asked Nora.

I looked around to make sure Grace, or indeed anyone else, wasn’t in earshot.

‘Well, I rather think I’d like to find out more,’ I said. ‘About being a suffragette.’ And as quickly as I could, I told her what had happened the previous evening, and what the lady, Mrs. Joyce, had said at the meeting.

‘And you know, she’s quite right,’ I said. ‘I mean, think of Harry. He gets away with doing all sorts of things that we could never do.’

‘That’s true,’ said Nora.

‘And he gets the best bits of chicken,’ I said, warming to my theme.

‘So does George, when he’s at home,’ said Nora. George is her brother, in case you’ve forgotten.

‘I know, I’ve seen him,’ I said. ‘All brothers get treated better than we do. And it’s been taken for granted since they were born that they’re going to university, even though anyone can tell just looking at Harry that he’s an absolute fool, and poor Phyllis who’s so clever had to beg and beg and beg. And really, them getting the vote when they grow up is just the same thing as getting all the best bits of chicken.’

‘Goodness me,’ said Nora. But before she could say anything else Mother Antoninas suddenly loomed over us and said, ‘What are you two girls dawdling for?’ and we had to run into the classroom at top speed. It wasn’t until break that we got a chance to talk properly while we drank our milk.

‘So what exactly are you proposing?’ asked Nora, after we’d found a suitably quiet corner of the refectory. ‘Because I’m not actually sure I want to be a suffragette. I mean, it does sound quite exciting and I do see what you mean about all these things about brothers, but I haven’t really thought about it much.’

‘I’m not saying I want to be one either,’ I said. ‘I mean, I’m not even sure if you can be one at our age, but I’m not saying I definitely don’t want to be one either.’

‘That sounds like you do want to be one,’ said Nora.

‘I don’t think it matters whether I do or not,’ I said, taking a gloomy swig of milk. ‘First of all because we’re too young. But mostly because Mother and Father are never going to let me leave the house again after last night. And even if they did, they wouldn’t let me go to meetings in town.’

‘Oh, I’m sure we could think of ways around that,’ said Nora. ‘And around the being too young thing. There must be something we could do.’

‘Does that mean you’re interested too?’ I said.

‘Possibly,’ said Nora. ‘And possibly not. I’ll have to consider it. Oh watch out, it’s Stella.’

‘Stella’s all right,’ I said, because she is. In fact, Stella Donovan is our friend. She’s a boarder and she can be a bit wet and white-mouse-like, but I do like her a lot. Still, just because I like her doesn’t mean I want her to know such secret information, so I immediately changed the subject and started talking about the pair of socks I’m knitting for Father’s birthday (navy wool, very smart). I hoped Stella would be so bored by this not very exciting topic of conversation that she’d wander off and talk to someone else, but it turns out that she’s become passionately interested in socks – knitting them, I mean, I don’t think even Stella could be interested in socks in general. And she immediately started talking about cable patterns and different ways of turning the heel.

‘If you start on a purl row, it looks so much neater,’ she said, and she was so earnest and enthusiastic I didn’t have the heart to stop the conversation, even though it was extremely dull. You simply can’t be mean to Stella. It would be like kicking a puppy.

Anyway, Stella not only wanted to talk about her sock-knitting, she had taken it down from her dorm in a little bag and insisted on demonstrating her amazing sock skills for us. And so what with Stella’s socks and Grace looking suspiciously at us all day, it wasn’t until we were on our way home that Nora and I were able to continue our conversation.

‘Thank goodness we’re free of that prison,’ she said as we turned the corner of Eccles Street. ‘Poor Stella, being stuck there for weeks and weeks at a time.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ I said. ‘Some of the time, anyway.’

We walked along in silence for a moment. But it was a comfortable silence. It always is, with Nora.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Nora, ‘about what we were talking about earlier. And we need to do some research. I’d like to find out more about it.’

I was very pleased to hear this.

‘Really?’ I said.

Nora nodded.

‘After all, I wouldn’t be able to be a doctor if women hadn’t fought for the right to go to university,’ she said.

I was so pleased to hear that she was interested in what Maggie had called ‘the cause’ that I didn’t tell her I thought she would probably want to be something else in a few months. Or days.

‘I agree about the research,’ I said. ‘Which means we’ll have to talk to Phyllis.’

‘How angry do you think she still is?’ said Nora. ‘About you following her, I mean.’

‘By the time we got home yesterday she was quite friendly,’ I said, ‘but then this morning she grabbed me when I was putting my coat on and told me I’d better not sneak after her again. She might not want to tell me anything in case I tell on her.’

‘You’ll just have to win her trust,’ said Nora, which was easy for her to say. She doesn’t know what big sisters are like. She only has George, her big brother, (and he’s away at boarding school most of the time) so I’m not sure she appreciates quite how unreasonable an older sister can be (or a younger one, come to think of it). It does seem awfully unfair that I have to put up with not only an older sister but an older brother AND a kid sister too. You’re so lucky, Frances, being an only child. I know you think it can be a bit of a bore in the holidays but it sounds awfully peaceful to me.

 

 

Saturday

 

I know I should have finished and posted this letter already but more things keep happening and I want to tell you all about them while they’re fresh in my mind. The letter is getting terribly long. I might have to ask Father for an extra stamp to cover the weight. Anyway, at the moment I feel jealous of you being away at school as well as being an only child, not least because last night my parents decided on my proper punishment for running off on Wednesday. I wasn’t allowed to go to Nellie Whelan’s birthday tea after school today. Which is disappointing because Nellie’s mother makes the most delicious lemon cake. I know this because she invited some of us to tea shortly after she joined our class and I had some of the cake then. When I mentioned this to Nora, she was not impressed.

‘Is that the only reason you wanted to go to Nellie’s party?’ she said severely. ‘It’s not very nice to go to someone’s birthday tea just because you like their mother’s cakes.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a prig,’ I said. ‘You know I do like Nellie really. I was just looking forward to the lemon cake as an extra treat.’

‘I suppose that’s all right,’ said Nora.

I must admit that I did feel awful when practically all the day girls and even a few of the boarders in our class, like Stella, went off to Nellie’s after school today and I had to go home, even though Nellie very kindly promised to save me a slice of lemon cake and take it to school on Monday. To make matters (much) worse, because Nora was going to the party and I was in disgrace, I wasn’t allowed to walk home alone and so I had to wait at the school’s main entrance with Mother Antoninas looking at me very suspiciously until Harry turned up to collect me.

The only good thing about this arrangement was that when Harry arrived, he looked just as annoyed by the whole thing as I was. As usual, his chum Frank was by his side. Also as usual, Harry didn’t bother saying hello or indeed anything even vaguely polite. Instead, he greeted me by saying ‘I’m going to be late for the rugby match because of you.’

‘It’s not as if you’re actually playing in it,’ I snapped as we trudged along Eccles Street. ‘You’re just watching. No one cares if two of the spectators turn up late.’

Of course, that made him even more annoyed because he really, really wishes that he was playing. But it’s ridiculous of him to expect to be in the first XV when there are boys in the school who are a whole year older than him.

Anyway, Frank tried to pour oil on troubled waters and politely asked me what I was planning to do when I left school. I don’t know if I ever told you what Frank looks like. He’s quite tall – even taller than Harry – and he has curly-ish golden hair that he keeps having to push out of his green-ish eyes.

‘I don’t know really,’ I said, after considering his question. ‘I suppose now Phyllis is going to the university, I’d like to go there too.’

‘To study what?’ asked Frank.

‘English literature, I think,’ I said. ‘That’s my favourite subject.’

‘That’s what I’d like to do too,’ said Frank, but before either of us could say anything else, Harry said, ‘It’s utterly ridiculous, girls going to college. What’s the point? They’ll just be looking after husbands and babies in a year or two. That is,’ he added, giving me a pointed look, ‘if any man will have them.’

‘Oh shut up, Harry, don’t be such an ass,’ said Frank.

I don’t know who was more surprised by Frank’s words, Harry or me. I thought he’d reply with something typically obnoxious, but to my immense surprise he just muttered, ‘I was only joking.’ And then he started talking about some boy in their class who’s supposedly an absolute wizard at rugby. It was all very dull but at least it took his mind off insulting me. They kept talking about boring boys’ school things all the way home. I didn’t particularly mind, though. Being ignored by Harry is vastly preferable to being talked to by him. Every so often Frank would politely ask me a question about my school: what sports do we play (none, in my case, at least not voluntarily) and whether the boarders are allowed out at the weekends. He doesn’t know much about Dublin girls and their schools. He has a sister, but she’s away at school in the country.

But mostly I was able to let the two of them have their conversation about rugby and how Father Jerome had made someone they kept calling ‘poor old Sheridan’ write out about twenty pages of the Aeneid as a punishment for falling asleep in class (even Mother Antoninas has never gone over five pages). And while they waffled on I was able to have a good think about the best way to approach Phyllis.

Somehow I’d barely seen her since the dramatic events of Wednesday night. On Thursday she and Kathleen went to some sort of art lecture with Kathleen’s mother and then yesterday she was at a concert in town with Aunt Josephine. I must say that it would take more than Beethoven to induce me to spend a whole evening with Aunt Josephine, but I suppose she did also treat Phyllis to dinner beforehand. As for this afternoon, I knew she was going to Kathleen’s house to help her trim a hat (I can only imagine what this one will look like) so I wouldn’t be able to talk to her when I got home.

But of course, I realised, Phyllis wasn’t the only person in the house who could tell me about suffragettes. There was also Maggie. And while I hadn’t been able to talk to her on her own since I discovered Phyllis’s secret, I knew that she wouldn’t be too busy this afternoon because Father had to go to some sort of work luncheon, and what with most of the family being out of the house, she wouldn’t be making a full dinner. Of course, I wasn’t sure that she’d tell me anything. If Phyllis had told her about me following her on Wednesday – and she probably had – Maggie might not trust me. I was worrying about the best way to approach her when Harry shook my arm and said, ‘Mollie? Are you listening to me? Get in there quickly so I can go to the match.’ And I realised we were at our front door. It’s quite surprising how much you don’t notice when you’re thinking hard about something interesting.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Harry as I rang the bell. ‘I don’t want to spend any more time with you than I absolutely have to.’

Maggie answered the door.

‘I’ve taken her home,’ said Harry. ‘Be a dear and tell Mother, won’t you, Maggie? I’m late for the rugger match as it is.’

He smiled at Maggie and she smiled back. She actually likes Harry. I suppose I must grudgingly admit that he’s generally quite nice to her. Possibly the only good thing about Harry is that he is always very polite to servants. Anyway, he and Frank went off and I followed Maggie into the hall.

‘Wasn’t it nice of your brother to walk you home?’ she said.

‘It certainly was not,’ I said. ‘He only did it because Mother and Father made him.’

‘Ah, don’t be too hard on him. He’s a decent lad,’ said Maggie. Which is clearly not true. But I didn’t bother contradicting her because I had questions I wanted to ask once I’d poked my head into the drawing room and said hello to Mother. Mother was having tea with Mrs. Sheffield and Miss Harrington who live around the corner. They were talking about some sale of work the church is organising and they were all talking very passionately because some of the women who had been asked to take part refused because they think sales of work are ‘Protestant things’.

I was able to escape to the kitchen quite quickly. As soon as I walked in Maggie produced the remains of a freshly baked lemon cake.

‘I thought you might like a slice of this,’ she said. ‘Seeing as you’re missing that party.’

‘Oh Maggie, you’re an absolute angel,’ I said. And I gave her a hug.

‘Get away with you,’ said Maggie briskly. ‘And don’t tell your mother I gave you some. You’re meant to be in disgrace, and besides, she thinks I made it for the sale of work committee. Which of course,’ she added with a grin, ‘I did.’

I couldn’t reply because my mouth was full of lemon cake so I just nodded instead. The cake was very good – not quite as good as Mrs. Whelan’s cakes, but of course I didn’t tell Maggie that.

When I’d finished my cake and was drinking a cup of lukewarm, very strong tea from the kitchen teapot, I asked, ‘Maggie, do you mind awfully if I ask you something?’

‘Well,’ said Maggie, looking amused, ‘that depends what it is. Though I must say it’s not like you to be so formal.’

‘Well, it’s about something …’ I hesitated, then took a deep breath and went on. ‘It’s about Phyllis.’

Maggie looked at me warily and didn’t say anything.

‘I know all,’ I said. Even as I said the words I realised how melodramatic I sounded, like somebody in a cheap magazine serial (you must know the sort of thing, those stories where everyone is always turning out to be a duke’s secret daughter or an earl in disguise and they all have masses of enemies who are trying to thwart them).

‘And what exactly,’ asked Maggie, with that same look in her eye, ‘do you know?’

‘I know about Phyllis being a suffragette,’ I said. ‘I think it’s marvellous. And,’ I said quickly, ‘I’m not going to tell anyone. I know you know all about it, Maggie, and I swear your secret is safe with me.’

I was getting more magazine-serial-ish by the second but I couldn’t help myself.

‘I heard a lady called Mrs. Joyce talk in town on Wednesday,’ I said. ‘And she was so interesting and, well, I want to find out more about it, and I hoped you might help me.’

Maggie wiped her hands on her apron, took a cup and saucer from the dresser and poured out a cup of tea from the big kitchen teapot.

‘I think that’s probably cold,’ I said, but she ignored me. She sat down on the opposite side of the table to me, took a sip of the tea, and said, ‘You do know that if your mother and father thought I was telling you how to be a suffragette I’d lose my place before you could say “Votes for Women’’.’

‘That would never happen!’ I said. I almost laughed, because the idea of Maggie being dismissed was so silly. ‘You’re part of the family. Mother’s always telling Aunt Josephine how lucky she is to have you. And besides, I won’t breathe a word.’

‘Words have a way,’ said Maggie, ‘of getting breathed. And I won’t deny that your mother and father have been very good to me, and I may very well be part of the family, but it’s a part that can be sent packing without a reference, and that’s what they’d do if they thought I was getting you involved in anything they wouldn’t approve of. It’s bad enough that I’ve been talking about it with Phyllis.’

‘But …’ I began.

‘No “buts”,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m sorry, Mollie. But if you want to find out more, you’ll have to talk to your sister.’ She drained her teacup (the tea must have been practically cold) and stood up. ‘And now I’ve got to finish the vegetables for later.’ She went into the scullery.

I didn’t dare follow her. I just sat there for a moment, thinking about how … shaky Maggie’s life is here. I’d never really thought about it before. I do see her as part of the family, and it would never have struck me that my parents might ever send her away, no matter what she’d done. I still found it hard to imagine. But it was clear that Maggie knew better.

I put down my cup and went into the hall. Mother’s church friends were just leaving so I had to say goodbye to them and promise to come to the sale of work. I wish I hadn’t. Sales like that are always full of terrible stale buns and felt pen-wipers and a white elephant stall with lots of dreadful jumble that nobody wants (when I was smaller I thought a white elephant stall really was a stall selling white elephants. Obviously I knew they couldn’t be regular-sized elephants, but I thought they might be special miniature ones. Or even toys. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered it was just a stall full of old fire screens and chipped tea cups).

I was just about to escape and slip up to my room when Mrs. Sheffield said, ‘Now, Mollie, would you like to do something very helpful for me?’

If I were being perfectly honest, I’d have said, ‘Not particularly,’ but of course I couldn’t say that. In fact, because Mother was glaring at me, I couldn’t even make a polite excuse like telling her I had lots of schoolwork to do. Instead, I said, ‘Of course!’ as sincerely as I could, which was very sincerely indeed. I think I really might be quite a good actress. Maybe I will be one when I grow up, though I can’t imagine Mother and Father would approve (and Aunt Josephine would probably disown me – which doesn’t sound that bad, actually).

Anyway, Mrs. Sheffield was taken in by my acting and said, ‘That’s marvellous. I was hoping you’d be able to take Barnaby out for his walk in an hour or so. Thomas is away and I can’t take him because Father O’Reilly is calling around to talk to me about this sale of work.’

I needed a lot of acting skills to do what I did next. I said, ‘That sounds lovely’ very enthusiastically. In fact, I might have gone a bit overboard on the enthusiasm because Mother gave me a very surprised look. She knows perfectly well that nobody in her right mind would describe taking Barnaby for a walk as ‘lovely’, not even Mrs. Sheffield.

Barnaby is not a person, in case you were wondering, but a very noisy and very fluffy little white dog who is also an absolute menace. Whenever anyone passes the Sheffields’ house, he pops up in the bay window like a jack-in-the-box, barking his head off. And that’s not the only annoying thing he does. They had to add an extra foot of fence to the wall of their back garden because Barnaby kept bouncing over the original one.

In fact, he is so bold and dreadful that Phyllis, Harry, Julia and I started calling him ‘The Menace’. Even Mother and Father sometimes call him The Menace by mistake. It’s reached the point where I forget that his real name is actually Barnaby. And I couldn’t think of a worse way of spending a Saturday afternoon when all my friends were at a party than taking him for a walk, but I couldn’t get out of it. Mother doesn’t usually like me wandering off on my own (as she puts it), but I suppose she thought nobody dangerous would go anywhere near me if I was with Barnaby. And so an hour later I was standing outside the Sheffields’ front door, holding a lead with Barnaby at the end of it.

‘Just about an hour or so should do it,’ said Mrs. Sheffield, who looked delighted to have got rid of The Menace for a while (as well she might). ‘Maybe you could take him to the Botanic Gardens, if they don’t mind dogs.’

‘All right,’ I said, though I was quite sure you’re not allowed take dogs into the Gardens and even if you were, I couldn’t imagine they’d let The Menace in once they’d laid eyes on him. He just exudes badness. I looked down at him, and he stared boldly back at me with his bright button eyes. Then I said goodbye to Mrs. Sheffield and set off down the road.

The Menace always strains at his lead so much that the Sheffields became worried that a normal collar and lead would hurt his neck, so they had to have a sort of harness made for him which means the lead is attached to his back. I was worried that he’d break free from my clutches so I wrapped my end of the lead firmly around my wrist. As you can imagine, it wasn’t a very relaxing walk, not least because when The Menace wasn’t pulling on his lead (he is surprisingly strong for such a small fluffy dog), he was making sudden stops and barking so loudly that passers-by kept turning and staring at me in a disapproving manner, to see what I was doing to make him bark so much. I wished I was wearing a large rosette like the one the woman at the meeting was wearing, except instead of saying ‘Votes for Women’ it would say ‘He’s not my dog’.

I was so busy feeling sorry for myself as The Menace barked and strained his way along the road, I didn’t notice that I wasn’t grasping the lead quite as tightly as I should have. And just as we were passing a small green park, The Menace broke free and ran away from me as fast as his fluffy white legs could carry him.

For a split second I was frozen to the spot with horror, and then I raced after him. But he is surprisingly fast as well as surprisingly strong, and I couldn’t catch him. He was soon far ahead of me.

‘Oh, please, stop that dog!’ I cried.

There weren’t many people around, and none of them seemed eager to grab hold of Barnaby’s lead, which swung out behind him as he ran. And which, I realised to my horror, was now swinging around a corner. Those streets are like a maze. If I lost sight of him in there, I was doomed. I’d never find him again. And while I didn’t particularly care if I never saw Barnaby again as long as I lived, I didn’t want him to be lost and alone on the streets. Besides, I’d get into terrible trouble once Mrs. Sheffield found out.

‘Catch that dog!’ I shrieked, or tried to. But by the time I staggered around the corner I could barely breathe, let alone shout, and I was starting to get a stitch. And then I saw a glorious sight.

If you’d told me last week that I’d ever be so happy to see either Barnaby the dog or Frank Nugent the boy, I’d have thought you were mad. But when I saw Frank walking towards me, holding the lead of a surprisingly docile Barnaby, who was trotting along beside him with a totally innocent look on his fluffy face, I was so overcome with joy I nearly burst into tears.

‘I believe you must be looking for this little chap,’ said Frank. ‘I heard you calling after him.

‘Oh Frank!’ I said. ‘Thank you, thank you! How did you manage to grab him?’

‘I’ve had plenty of practice tackling your brother at rugby,’ said Frank, and smiled. He has a nice, friendly smile.

‘Barnaby’s almost as aggravating as Harry,’ I said, as Frank carefully passed over the lead. ‘I’d better take him home now before he does anything else dreadful.’

‘Would you mind if I walked part of the way home with you?’ said Frank. ‘It’s on my way.’

I told him I didn’t mind at all, which was true, and asked him why he wasn’t still at the rugby match.

‘It’s my father’s birthday,’ said Frank. ‘We’re having a special birthday tea. So I had to leave half way through.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I said. And I couldn’t think of anything to say after that. I don’t think I’d ever been on my own with Frank before. Or any boy, for that matter. He didn’t seem to be able think of anything to say either, and we walked along in a slightly awkward silence until Frank said, ‘Is he new?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, confused.

‘The dog,’ said Frank. ‘Harry didn’t mention that you were getting a pet.’

‘He’s not ours!’ I said, in tones of such outraged horror that Frank started to laugh, and then so did I, and I explained about Mrs. Sheffield and how awful The Menace was. After that things were much more comfortable between us. Even The Menace behaved himself and didn’t pull on his lead, which was slightly irritating in one way because it made it look as though I had been too feeble to hold onto a normal dog earlier, rather than a monstrous fiend with superhuman – I mean supercanine – strength.

We had been walking along for about ten minutes when Frank mentioned that he was taking part in a debate at school about the future of the Home Rule bill.

‘But I don’t suppose you’re interested in politics, are you?’ he said. ‘Most girls aren’t.’

Well, I hadn’t been particularly interested in politics, but I couldn’t help resenting his assumption.

‘Maybe I’d be more interested,’ I said, a little stiffly, ‘if I knew that I’d have a say in things when I grow up. I mean, if women had the vote.’

‘Oh, well, yes,’ said Frank. ‘Maybe you would. I hadn’t really thought of that.’

‘What do you think?’ I asked. ‘About women’s suffrage, I mean.’ And for some reason, I don’t know why, I really cared about what his answer would be.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose I hadn’t really thought about that much either.’

I was going to make a smart remark but then I remembered that I hadn’t thought about it much until last week, so instead I said, ‘Well, I think women should have the vote. Why shouldn’t we? It’s not fair that we shouldn’t have a say in anything.’ I remembered what Mrs. Joyce had said last week. ‘We have to keep to the laws of the land, don’t we? But we don’t have a say in who makes them.’

I almost held my breath as I waited for Frank’s answer. He ran a hand through his fair curls and then he said, ‘I suppose you’re right.’

I let out my breath.

‘My mother did once say,’ Frank went on, ‘that she couldn’t see why my uncle Stephen should have a vote when she didn’t. And if you’d ever met my uncle Stephen, you’d see why.’ He laughed. ‘Oh, this is my turn.’

We paused at the corner.

‘Thanks for grabbing The Menace,’ I said.

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Frank. He bent down to pat Barnaby’s white fluffy head.

The Menace, as if aware that he’d soon have me all to himself again, started straining against his harness.

‘Goodness, he’s a strong little chap, isn’t he?’ said Frank, giving Barnaby’s woolly curls a last rub. ‘He doesn’t look it. Well, goodbye. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.’

‘Goodbye,’ I said.

He lifted his hand in a sort of salute, and headed off. I looked after him for a moment, but Barnaby was straining himself in the direction of home so I took him back to the Sheffields’ house.

‘Back so soon?’ said Mrs. Sheffield, after her maid Agnes had fetched her. She looked slightly disappointed to be reunited with Barnaby so soon. ‘Was he any trouble?’

‘Not at all,’ I said, which was my third convincing lie of the day. I’m starting to get a bit worried at how easily these lies spring to my lips, even if they do mean I’m a good actress.

Anyway, Mrs. Sheffield thanked me, and I was so immersed in my role as someone who had enjoyed taking Barnaby for a walk that I almost offered to do it again in the future, but luckily I restrained myself in time. And then I walked home and went into the dining room to write this letter. I am in a strangely good mood and I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s the exercise. I can’t remember the last time I did so much running in one go. It must be good for me.

But I am finally going to finish this letter now. If I wait to write until after I’ve got something out of Phyllis, the letter will get so long it’ll be more of a package and then it will definitely be too expensive. It’s long enough as it is. I do hope you haven’t been bored reading it. So I will bid you farewell.

 

Write soon!

Best love, and Votes for Women!

Mollie