Josie Dickson was dying; worse, she knew she was dying, though she did her calm and gallant best to keep that knowledge from those she loved.
‘Oh, I’m miles better, love,’ she said smiling, sweet and dismissive, at Sally. ‘I’ll be out of here in no time. I’ve been asking and asking to go home, and I’m sure Doctor Patten would let me. Even Dad agrees I’d be better off at home. It’s just silly Dan that’s making me stay. But Sally! Just look at you! You’re thin as a rail! What on earth have they done to you?’
‘Well, Holloway isn’t exactly the Savoy.’ Sally was still struggling to master the shock of her first sight of Josie, warned though she had been – warm, clear-skinned, bright-eyed Josie, who had become skeletal in her brief illness, her skin like thin and bloodless silk stretched too tightly over fragile bone, an unhealthy flush in her cheeks, her brown eyes sunken and burned out with recurrent fever. Her left hand lay as if already lifeless upon the starched white counterpane. The right arm of her nightdress was pinned in awkward emptiness across her breast. Two days before, in a final attempt to stop the spread of the poison that was slowly but certainly killing her, the surgeon had amputated to the elbow. Sally, weak still from her own recent ordeal and less in charge of her emotions than she cared to admit even to herself had been shaken almost to tears at first sight of her friend; but Dan, before ever allowing her to the bedside, had been fierce. ‘I tell you flat, Sal – I don’t want any tears. Whatever you do, don’t cry. Don’t let her see that the sight of her upsets you. I won’t have it. She needs help. She needs strength. She needs to see a smiling face. She needs normality. The last thing she needs is anyone weeping over her. If you can’t manage it, then you’ll have to stay away from her. We won’t save her by collapsing all over her in tears. She needs hope. If you can’t give her that then I tell you straight I won’t let you see her.’
And Sally, understanding, had promised and had fought the horror that had gripped her at the sight of that gaunt, pain-filled face. Yet still she had to clear her throat awkwardly before continuing. ‘You don’t get fat on prison gruel.’
The thin left hand moved a little. Sally took it and squeezed it gently, afraid even in her own weakened state of crushing the brittle-feeling bones, of tearing that hot, fine-drawn skin. ‘I think you were ever so brave.’ Josie smiled again, the old, sweet smile, ‘I was ever so proud of you. I couldn’t have done it. Not for anything. It must have been awful.’
Sally grinned lopsidedly. ‘You forget – I’m an old lag. I knew what to expect.’
‘That makes you more brave, not less.’ Josie’s voice was positive. ‘Miss Patten said so too. When she came with Doctor Patten to see me. She said everyone was proud of you.’
Sally shrugged and shook her head. ‘And what about you, then? Lord – I can’t leave you for a minute, can I? Look at the state you get yourself into the moment I take my eye off you!’
Josie moved her head on the pillow and laughed a little. Her eyes were heavy-lidded. As Sally watched they drooped with sickly weariness.
‘You’re tired,’ she said anxiously. ‘Should I go?’
The hand that lay in hers moved spasmodically. ‘No. Don’t go. Stay a while. I’ll be all right in a tick.’
They sat in silence. Josie propped against her mountain of pillows with her eyes shut, apparently dozing, Sally tense as a leashed animal upon the chair beside her watching her, willing strength into that terrifying frail body, resolution into the failing will. Around them the bustle of visiting time washed like a sea of movement about the still island of the high, narrow bed. Nurses in their long dark skirts, high collars, frilled caps and vast pinafores swished past, rustling with inevitable, starchy indifference. Other visitors murmured to their bedridden friends and relatives, or sat in difficult silence too distressed or perhaps simply too awkward to speak. Beyond the narrow window, behind Josie’s still, gaunt face, warm June sunshine flooded the sky and turned the air, even in the dust of the overcrowded city to summer gold.
‘Sally?’ Josie’s eyes flickered open suddenly.
‘Yes?’
‘You – you have made it up with Dan, haven’t you?’
Sally nodded, faint colour in her cheeks. ‘Course.’
‘I can’t bear you to be bad friends.’
‘We’re not. Course we’re not.’
‘He can be pig-headed I know—’
Sally grinned at that. ‘You can say that again.’
‘—but he loves you.’
Sally ducked her head, looked at their two hands linked upon the counterpane, her own thin, hard, full of strength, Josie’s with pale, oddly blotched skin and fingers that could barely curl about the narrow hand that held them.
‘Sally—’ the low voice was insistent.
Sally lifted her head.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I heard.’
‘He does love you.’ The lax fingers twitched a little. ‘Please – don’t hurt him.’
‘I won’t.’ The words were guarded. ‘You know I won’t.’
The reassurance seemed to satisfy the sick girl for all its ambivalence. She sighed a little. Closed her eyes again.
Sally waited until the even rhythm of her breathing spoke of true sleep then gently disentangled her fingers from the limp hand and stood up. At the door of the long ward Dan stood waiting. For a brief, silent moment her eyes met his stubborn, unflinching gaze. Before she could speak a brisk nurse paused by her side. ‘Miss Smith?’
‘Yes.’
‘Doctor Patten asked that you spare him a moment.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Will you follow me, please?’
Before following the nurse Sally stopped for the space of a heart-beat by Josie’s silent brother, put up a hand gently to touch his cheek as she passed. His slow smile was difficult, edged with the misery he doggedly refused to acknowledge. She followed the nurse down a dreary, seemingly endless corridor, their footsteps echoing sharply from the impersonal tiled walls. In the brown-painted, cluttered office into which Sally was shown were a desk and chair, a huge wooden filing cabinet, a screen folded haphazardly against the wall and a high couch covered with a brown blanket. There was paper everywhere. A glass-fronted cupboard in the corner was filled with neat rows of jars and bottles. There was no sign of Ben Patten.
The nurse tutted. ‘He was here just a moment or so ago. He must have been called away. Will you wait?’
‘Yes.’ Sally stood looking round as the door closed behind her, shutting out the sharp clip of footsteps, the rattle of a trolley. She walked to the window. A huge plane tree stood between the window and the noisy road, mottled trunk gleaming, big dusty leaves bathed in sunshine, quivering at the movement of the squabbling sparrows that flitted busily amongst the branches. Sally laid her forehead tiredly against the smudged glass. She had been out of prison for two days, and still she felt oddly disorientated. Her stomach was unready to digest the quantities of food she was offered, however simple the fare. She found the constant company of people strangely stressful after those long solitary days of confinement. Even Toby’s happy chatter could tire her after a while. But to see the sky, to watch these silly, quarrelling birds, to know that she was free to sit, to stand, to come, go, speak or be still as she liked was a joy to be savoured as she had never savoured any other; or had been until she had seen Josie’s thin face against the pillows, understood that if her own incarceration were over Josie’s – harder, more terrifying, infinitely more unjust – was not and very possibly in this life never would be. For Josie the only release from her imprisonment in that failing body was likely to come through death. She sucked her bottom lip, hard, biting it, stopping tears. She would not believe it! Superstitiously she crossed her fingers – who knew but that believing things might make them happen?
She closed her eyes against the sunshine, against the noisy, careless birds, against the bright summer light and the sheer exuberant noise of the city streets that reached her through the shield of the window. How could the world go about its business so cruelly indifferent when Josie lay dying inch by inch for the sake of a careless moment, an inefficient guard upon a simple machine, a split-second mistake?
She did not hear the door open behind her, nor the slight click of its shutting.
‘Sally?’
She turned. Ben Patten dumped his battered bag on top of the papers on his desk. Balanced in his other hand was a tray upon which stood two steaming mugs. ‘Tea,’ he said.
She accepted a mug, thanking him. He looked gauntly tired. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here. I got called away. An emergency in the fever ward. There’s something of an epidemic on.’ He sat down behind the desk, gulped a mouthful of tea, rested his bowed head for a moment on the fingertips of his free hand. ‘It’s so damned overcrowded down there,’ he muttered quietly, almost to himself, ‘no wonder we can’t stop them dying like flies.’
Sally watched him in silence, sipping her tea, leashing her sympathy. The affairs of the fever ward were not at that moment her priority. There was one thing she wanted to know and one thing only. Yet something kept her still, allowing him a moment to emerge from whatever pain it was she sensed was gripping him, clenching his face and his big, capable hand, making the straight line of his mouth grim. And as she stood in silence and watched him she found herself to her own intense astonishment suppressing an absurd rise of compassion, a ridiculous urge to lay a hand upon the tensely hunched shoulder, to smooth the rough, untidy hair, to offer comfort, however slight, respite from the battle he fought normally so coolly and so well. Behind his back her mouth pursed in wry self-derision. The day that Doctor Ben Patten needed – or even noticed – Sally Smith’s sympathy would be a day indeed.
‘You wanted to talk to me?’ Her husky voice was cool.
‘Yes.’ He lifted his head, almost shaking it, like a dog emerging from water, freeing himself from the weight of his thoughts. He looked at the girl who stood with her back to the light watching him dispassionately. As always her sharp-featured face beneath its untidy crown of light brown hair was unnervingly collected, the slanting greenish eyes a little wary, giving away nothing.
‘About Josie?’
He paused for the briefest of moments. ‘Yes. And about her brother.’
She waited.
He stood up restlessly, prowled the room for a moment. Then with a sweep of his hand he cleared a spot on the desk and perched upon it, one leg dangling. He sipped his tea, eyed the mug pensively for a second, lifted his head. ‘Miss Dickson wants to go home. Her brother won’t allow it.’
Sally was staring at him. ‘Go home!’ she interrupted incredulously. ‘In that state? Of course she can’t go home!’
He looked back down at the mug in his hand. ‘It’s her wish,’ he said quietly.
She stood very, very still for what seemed a very long time. ‘To go home’, she said at last flatly, disbelievingly, accusingly, ‘to die?’
In the silence a clock ticked. ‘Yes.’
‘You’ve given up? You aren’t even going to try to save her?’
His glance was quick and edged with anger at that. ‘We have tried.’
‘And now you’re giving up?’ The words were bitter, more statement than question.
He moved a weary head. ‘Sally – believe me – there’s nothing we can do. Nothing. It’s gone too far. Her whole body is poisoned. We have nothing with which to fight it.’ He waited for a moment, studying her face. Then he spread his hands eloquently. ‘She hates it here. She’s unhappy. Sally – I’m sorry, but don’t you see – she doesn’t want to die here amongst strangers. She wants to go home. Her father understands. Her brother won’t listen. And she won’t go against him.’
She turned away from him, back to the window. ‘And that’s why you got me out of Holloway? To persuade Dan to let his sister go home to die? To release one of your precious beds?’ The tone was unforgivable; cruelly bitter. She did not care. The birds still fought their silly battles in the tree before her blurred eyes.
He came behind her quietly; she was taken entirely by surprise by the hand on her shoulder that swung her forcibly to face him, equally taken aback by the flaring anger in his eyes. For an odd, suspended moment they glared at each other, each wrapped in self-righteous fury. Then she saw the blaze in his face die. His hand dropped from her shoulder. ‘Is that truly what you think?’ he asked quietly.
She had spoken in haste and judged too harshly, and she knew it; but she would not answer.
Abruptly he turned from her, went back to the desk, stood for a moment, rock still and controlled, his back to her.
She watched him in silence. Then, ‘Is there truly no hope?’ she asked at last, bleakly and quietly.
He shook his head. ‘None.’
‘How long?’
‘A day. Perhaps two or three. She’s very weak.’
‘I see.’
He turned to face her, and he was calm again. ‘Sally, believe me. If a miracle is to occur it will as well occur at home as it will here. At least she’ll be happy. She truly hates it here.’ He shrugged, ‘And who can blame her? It’s a drear enough place, God knows. Will you speak to her brother?’ The square, strong face was intent.
She held him eye to eye for a moment, then, ‘Yes,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Thank you. Hannah will find a nurse for her. She’ll be as well cared for there as here. And more comfortable.’
Sally said nothing.
He watched her for a long moment with flint-dark eyes. ‘Sally – have you any idea what we’re up against here?’ he asked suddenly, gesturing, the wave of his hand taking in not only the cluttered office but the hospital beyond. ‘Do you know how many people we treat and under what disadvantage? The ratio of doctors to patients in the better-off parts of London is one to less than five hundred. Do you know what it is here? One to more than five thousand. We haven’t the facilities, we haven’t the staff, and we haven’t the money to cope. Most of us work for next to nothing. We care about what we do. But we aren’t miracle workers! With that kind of injury Miss Dickson should never have been treated as an outpatient in the first place. And then, once the hand became septic she should never have left it as long as she did before coming to us. We could only do too little and too late. But we did our best.’ He ran a huge hand through his untidy hair. ‘We did our best,’ he repeated quietly, but with force.
Sally was regarding him with narrowed, guarded eyes. She wanted to be angry. She did not want to feel sorry for him. She did not want to be moved by his words, nor by the tired lines in his face, the uncharacteristic note of weariness in his voice. She did not above all want to experience the strange pang of almost tender sympathy that unexpectedly struck her as he bent his head and absent-mindedly and tiredly rubbed the back of his neck; an odd and painful emotion of the kind she sometimes felt for Toby when he was hurt or disappointed.
‘I’ll go talk to Dan,’ she said brusquely, ‘though that isn’t to say he’ll listen.’
He smiled a little at that, drily. ‘Miss Dickson seemed to think that you’re the only one likely to influence him. She has every faith that he’ll listen to you.’
For some reason she found herself flushing. She shook her head. She felt quite ridiculously and inexplicably confused, just as ridiculously and even more inexplicably reluctant to leave him with the atmosphere between them still several shades less than friendly. Face set she marched to the door.
‘Sally – I’m sorry. Truly sorry.’
‘Yes,’ she said ungraciously, ‘so are we all, aren’t we? I don’t suppose that’s much consolation to Josie,’ and shut the door with a sharp click very firmly upon his silence.
Josie was taken home that afternoon. Two days later, her brothers and her father by her side, she died. Sally, arriving at the house half an hour later knew the moment she turned the corner of the street and saw the drawn curtains that the worst had happened. Dan opened the door to her and, with no word spoken she stepped straight and simply into his open arms and wept as if her heart were breaking, shedding the tears that in these last few awful days had built into a dam of grief behind the smiles that had made Josie’s last days bearable. As they stood so, Walter came to them, hugging an arm about each of them, tears coursing unashamedly down his weather-darkened face. Bill Dickson sat by his daughter’s bedside, unmoving and unspeaking, nodding to Sally as she entered the darkened room, his face drained and wooden with grief.
Silently Sally took his hand, stood beside him looking down at the lifeless shell that had been Josie. Memory flickered: Josie laughing, Josie talking, Josie smiling in pleasure at the gathering of those she loved about her. A simple, happy soul, the light of life snuffed out by the venom that had spread its wicked fingers through her blood. Unnecessarily? She could not bear to think so.
Dan had come to stand on the opposite side of the bed, his eyes not on his dead sister but upon Sally’s tear-drenched face.
A snippet of conversation from the day before drifted into Sally’s numbed brain; Hannah saying, ‘I truly think my brother must be taking leave of his senses altogether. He tells me he intends to make a particular study of the causes and treatment of septicaemia – not instead of everything else, of course, but as well as – whenever does the silly man think he’ll find time to sleep?’ So Ben Patten had been truly moved by the tragedy of Josie, and by her courage in facing it. Perhaps one day, because of her, a life would be saved that might have been lost. Not for nothing then, but poor consolation.
Sally became suddenly and uncomfortably aware of Dan’s fixed gaze upon her. Gently she disentangled her hand from the bereaved father’s, ‘Someone should go for the doctor.’
The funeral service was an ordeal. Josie had been a happy and popular girl, she had died in her twentieth year, full of joy and promise. There were many tears shed, many muffled sobs as the simple coffin was lowered. Afterwards at the Dickson home Sally helped with the obligatory funeral feast, and was astonished at the bizarre lift of spirits in the little house once the tea was brewed, the beer keg broached, the sandwiches and cakes spread upon the table. From a subdued and tearful beginning in half an hour voices were raised in a buzz of talk, there was the occasional lift of laughter as friends and relations, many of whom had not crossed each other’s path since the last wedding, christening or funeral exchanged gossip. Josie’s picture stood upon the mantelpiece, black-draped.
‘Oh, she was a lovely girl,’ with maudlin sentimentality an elderly woman in vast purple nodded her head to her companion, ‘a lovely girl. Like they say – the Lord takes them as ’e loves young.’
Sally passed through the throng, offering sandwiches, smiling and nodding, dexterously and determinedly avoiding conversation. In the narrow, well-trimmed garden Bill Dickson stood with his sons, a tot of sustaining rum in his hand, accepting stoically the murmured sympathy of friends and neighbours, ‘Such a lovely girl, our Josie.’ ‘Never ’eard a cross word from ’er, that I swear.’ ‘You’ll miss ’er, Bill lad. We all will.’
Sally turned to slip away; found her way blocked apologetically but firmly by a stretched arm the muscles of which showed clearly and strongly through the shirtsleeve. Dan’s broad, good-natured face was calm, his still reddened eyes steady. He had for her a small smile, affectionate and warm. ‘Thank you for your help.’
She smiled acknowledgement.
‘I – wondered—’ he hesitated.
‘Yes?’
‘Do they – do they let you have visitors at that children’s place of yours?’
Her hesitation was minimal. ‘Course they do. It isn’t a prison.’
‘I just thought – p’raps I could pop over and see you one day?’
She nibbled her lip. ‘Dan—’
‘Oh, don’t worry. I won’t push you, I promise. It’s just – with Josie gone – I’d hate us to lose touch.’
‘Yes. Me too.’
‘I can then? Come and see you?’
‘Of course you can.’ Her smile was genuine, but her heart was heavy. ‘Please don’t hurt him,’ Josie had said, and she had promised. But which hurt might be greater? To refuse him her friendship now, or to refuse him her love – as she knew she would have to – later? Whatever he might hope, Josie’s death had changed nothing. She smiled and excused herself, slipped with relief into the relative quiet of the kitchen. ‘Hello, Mrs Dobson – need a hand with the washing up?’
Hannah, nursing the small pleasure of a cheering secret, was waiting in the parlour for Sally to return when she heard the other girl’s footsteps in the yard and saw her light go on. Moving a little stiffly still because of her strapped ribs and shoulder she slipped quietly up the stairs, past the doors of the children’s dormitories, and tapped on the door. Sally opened it, surprise on her tired face. ‘Miss Hannah!’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake – I thought we’d dropped all that?’ Hannah smiled. ‘At least when we’re off duty. May I come in? I know you must be exhausted, but I promise I won’t stay. I just wanted a word with you.’
Sally opened the door wider, stepping back. The shapeless black hat she had borrowed from Hannah for the funeral lay upon the bed where she had tossed it a moment before. Her eyes were dark-shadowed.
‘Was it awful?’ Hannah asked with quick sympathy.
‘A bit, yes.’
‘I hate funerals. But then I suppose everyone does.’
Sally shook her head with the shadow of her wry smile. ‘Wrong. Everyone doesn’t. Some people can manage positively to enjoy them.’
‘Oh dear. Bad as that? Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No thanks. I’m swimming in the stuff already.’ Politely Sally waited. She was dog tired and needed her bed.
Hannah took her cue. ‘Right. I just came to tell you that there’s a meeting tomorrow at the Caxton Hall, and we’ve been specially invited.’
‘I’m on duty tomorrow evening.’
Hannah shook her head briskly. ‘No you aren’t. I’ve arranged for Bron to swap with you. I’ll come for you at six. You will be ready?’
‘I—’ Sally moved her head a little helplessly. She could not think. The last thing she wanted to do was to organize tomorrow.
‘Of course you will. I won’t take “no” for an answer. It will do you good.’
Sally gleamed a small smile. ‘If you say so, doctor.’
‘I do.’ With absent efficiency Hannah caught a capricious hairpin as it slid from the coils of her hair, pushed it firmly back. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Sally walked to the window, watched the brisk figure cross the courtyard. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. Strange. Death was such a momentous thing. Such a very terrible thing when it came to someone as young, as full of promise as Josie had been. And yet nothing really changed. Life went on, with just a small rent in its fabric to show where death had claimed his due, a rent that she knew, however miserably one might want to deny it at the time, would gradually heal, making the fabric whole again.
Sighing she threw off her clothes, leaving them in a scrambled heap on the floor as she turned down the lamp and crawled, bone-tired and aching, into bed.
Ben Patten, standing with his pipe in the deepest shadows of the yard saw the light flicker and dim. Sally was up later than usual this evening. Then he remembered. Of course. It had been the Dickson girl’s funeral today. He drew deeply on his pipe, determinedly ignoring the faint trembling of the hand that held it. Bloody shame that. Bloody waste. Interesting paper he’d found though, whilst studying the case – there had to be an answer, an antidote to the poisoning of the blood.
The obstinately logical workings of his mind jammed somewhere on the thought. Charlotte’s face, unhealthily plump and pale and fraught with tears and terror – as it had been moments before when he left her – hung accusingly in the darkness before him.
‘No!’ she had said, trembling and cowering from him, ‘I can’t! Don’t touch me! I won’t! It’s –it’s too soon – I can’t – please – don’t touch me!’ She had reeled away from him, her nightgown clutched across full breasts.
He had recognized hysteria, seen too her fear of him, her fear of his body, etched into the distorted lines of her face. It had shaken him to the soul. The desire that had prompted him to reach for her had fled. Coldly he had drawn away from her. In silence had left her to her desperate sobbing.
And now he stood alone in the darkness as the lights of the Dancing Bear went out one by one around him.
Caxton Hall was packed; and not just with women, Sally was quick to notice as she and Hannah took their seats, but with a fair sprinkling of men as well. They were late – the hall was full and the platform party already seated. Sally’s spirits, still low after the events of the week, lifted a little at the sight of the handsome figure of Emmeline Pankhurst flanked by her two daughters. With all the Pankhursts here it would certainly be, as Hannah had promised with a confident smile, a special meeting. With them on the platform were the well-known and well-loved figures of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, the treasurer of the WSPU and her husband, a staunch supporter, and beside them the slight, fair figure of Annie Kenney, the Manchester working girl who had just the year before arrived from the north with nothing but courage and two pounds in her pocket, her brief to ‘rouse London’. Her passionate dedication to the Pankhursts and their cause had already cost her her freedom twice and was more than likely to do so again. Sally studied her. Here was a girl very like herself, a girl disadvantaged, ill-educated, who still wore proudly the clogs and shawl she had worn as she trudged morning and evening to the mill where she had scraped a living. She was also a girl who had been accepted into the most inner circles of the Union, whose praises were sung by everyone who knew her; a girl who had won an enviable and admired place for herself by her own efforts, her own courage.
When Christabel Pankhurst, trim, attractive and shining with fervour rose to speak, she was cheered to the echo before she could open her mouth. Darling of the movement, this eloquent, passionate and intelligent girl personified for many the spirit of their cause. Witty and independent – in defiance of convention she had studied law in Manchester, as her sister Sylvia had studied art – she could hold an audience in the palm of her small, capable hand. She spoke now of the necessary drive for funds, of the hundreds of meetings being organized up and down the country to win support for the fight for women’s suffrage. ‘Twenty thousand people came to cheer and to contribute in Manchester – twenty thousand! Let the Liberal Government beware! In Hyde Park thousands come each Sunday to support us! Let the Liberal Government beware! The women want the vote! The women will have the vote! Let the Liberal Government beware!’ The last, fierce words were lost in a storm of cheering. Smiling she waited until the noise died a little. Then, dropping her voice she asked, looking keenly around the hall, ‘And what is this vote?’
Silence fell.
She let it build for a moment before continuing. ‘What is this vote for which women are ready to fight, ready to shed their blood and sacrifice their freedom?’
Sally, with most of the rest of the audience was still and tense as a drawn bow in her chair, leaning forward a little, eyes and ears intent upon that small, charismatic figure, enthralled.
‘I’ll tell you what it is. It is a key. It is a very small key to a very large door. It is a symbol. A symbol of citizenship. A symbol of freedom. It is not an end, but a beginning!’ She stopped, let the words sink in to the hearts and minds of her audience, knowing she had them. ‘Let the Liberal Government beware,’ she said very quietly, very finally.
The roof nearly lifted. Sally and Hannah were on their feet with the rest, clapping and shouting, grinning at each other like children, exhilarated. It was full minutes before a smiling Emmeline Pankhurst could, with lifted hands, quieten the meeting. ‘Friends—’
The uproar continued.
She waited. ‘Friends—’ This time quiet slowly fell. Seats clattered as people sat down. Mrs Pankhurst, tall and dignified, waited until full silence had taken the hall. ‘Friends,’ she said again, ‘thank you. Thank you for your support and for your donations. Thank you for your efforts. Thank you for coming to listen to us tonight.’ She paused for a moment, looking round, including everyone in the hall in that warm glance. ‘As my daughter Christabel has just said, we are fighting for a cause. As she also pointed out that cause already has its martyrs, brave women who risk injury – yes perhaps even death – to stand up for – to demand! – their rights as citizens of this great country. Who go to prison rather than forswear their beliefs. With such courage – such sheer valiance – behind us, how can we help but win?’ She lifted her head proudly. Like her daughter she held them, breath bated, by the sheer force of her personality. ‘And does not such bravery deserve recognition? We have with us tonight two young women who have suffered so. I ask you now to thank them. To show your gratitude for their gallantry in your cause. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to clap the prisoners to the platform.’
Sally had been listening in growing, glowing confusion.
Smiling glances had been thrown her way as Mrs Pankhurst spoke. Hannah sat, head proudly high, eyes shining, beside her. At the last words she rose and taking Sally by the hand drew her to her feet with her. A thunderous, rhythmic clapping and stamping filled the hall. In a daze Sally allowed herself to be ushered along the row to the aisle that led to the stage. Eager hands reached, taking hers, patting her shoulders. Face aflame she walked with Hannah in time to the joyous clapping towards the brightly lit stage. They climbed the steps, walked along the line of the platform party shaking hands.
‘Well done, my dears!’ Mrs Pethick-Lawrence was beaming. ‘A blow for freedom!’
‘Splendid!’ Christabel’s hand was strong and warm, the slanting green eyes asparkle.
‘Hannah! Sally!’ Sylvia, a familiar and friendly face, kissed them both warmly, ‘Oh, I’m so proud of you both!’
Annie Kenney grinned, pumping their hands with a vigour that entirely belied her frail appearance.
‘A small token.’ Emmeline Pankhurst, graceful and commanding, pinned small enamelled brooches on to their lapels – a white dove in flight with the words ‘Votes for Women’ emblazoned beneath it. ‘We’ll show them what brave soldiers we have in our ranks!’
Sally had never been so taken aback, never in her life felt so proud. As the din of the applause echoed to the roof, she smiled dazedly at Hannah. So. It was true then. Sally Smith was no longer alone and pitched solitarily against a hostile world. She was one of a team. Part of an army. She had friends.
In sheer exuberance at the edge of the stage she stopped, lifted a small clenched fist. ‘Votes for women!’
And ‘Votes for women!’ roared back the audience, delighted, and clapped them with enthusiasm back to their seats.
The months that followed that meeting, through the summer and autumn of 1907, saw an upsurge in militancy: they also saw a split in the movement. Perhaps inevitably the constitutionalists, who had been fighting for the vote for so long through constitutional means, were uncomfortable and on occasion in outright and outraged disagreement with the more direct action favoured by the Pankhursts and their followers. As throughout the summer political meetings were broken up and more women arrested and imprisoned, the breach between the two sides grew: both were passionately dedicated to the same end, but as to the means they differed, and in some cases differed bitterly. There were also some discontented and uneasy mutterings about the high-handed behaviour of both Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel, with whose crusading fervour and disregard for convention it must be said not everyone was comfortable. At the beginning of October the differences came to a head and the movement split, the more moderate constitutionalists finally taking the name of the Women’s Freedom League, whilst the militants lined proudly behind the Pankhursts and their Women’s Social and Political Union banner. There was never any question but that Hannah and Sally would stay with the militant Union. To Sally particularly, talk of petitions and by-elections, of constitutional rights and of Private Member’s Bills meant nothing. It was the way of life, so far as she had ever known it, that nothing came easily. If you wanted something, you fought for it.
On 12 October Mr Sydney Buxton held yet another meeting in Poplar. On the 13th, Sally Smith, Hannah Patten and half a dozen others were sentenced by a not unsympathetic but mildly exasperated judge to two weeks in the second division; and this time they served their time.
Charlotte Patten watched it all with puzzled and disinterested eyes. What possessed Hannah, or the girl Sally or any other madwoman engaged in this lunatic battle for a vote that no one so far as she could see wanted she could not imagine. Life was surely complicated enough without wilfully making it more so? Was it not bad enough that her brother Ralph talked with such sober concern of growing dissatisfaction amongst the labouring classes, the need for drastic social reform, even, with in Charlotte’s eyes absurd earnestness, of the possible stirrings of revolution? Or that Doctor Will and Ben had little apparent concern with anything but the setting up of a panel to monitor the health of schoolchildren, the provision of school meals for the needy, the insistence upon registration of births and vaccination for every Tom, Dick or Harry of a baby? Who in all of this cared about her? Who cared that she had neither the will nor the energy sometimes to get out of bed in the morning? Who cared that when she looked in her mirror – which nowadays was seldom – she barely recognized the pale, plump face set in downward, ageing lines, that looked back at her? Who was in the least concerned that on occasion the mere sight of her child was enough to bring on a sick headache that could confine her to a darkened room for hours?
No one.
Whilst Hannah cavorted in this ridiculous and – yes, it had to be said, demeaning – way with her social inferiors, whilst Ralph split his time almost equally between his beastly deprived children and their even beastlier and apparently even more deprived elders, and Peter, blithe as always, pursued – as always – his own capricious affairs she, Charlotte, was left alone in this teeming madhouse of a household. Alone to face Mrs Winterbottom, the widowed nurse Ben had at last agreed should be hired to help with the child; to cope with a Mrs Briggs whose phlegmatic and unsettling refusal to take the reins of the chaotic household entirely back into her own hands now that there was a ‘Mrs Ben’ to take the responsibility was driving Charlotte to distraction; and worse and, last and most fearful, to watch in resentful and helpless self-pity as her relationship with her husband – for what it had ever been worth – disintegrated entirely. He was polite. He was correct in every way. He was as distant as a well-mannered stranger on an omnibus. Almost she longed for those days when at least she had been able to rouse him to anger with her outbursts. Now he treated her, firmly but not unkindly, like a child: no – like a slightly ill-behaved and unwanted child with whom he had been saddled and of whom, in all good faith, he could not be rid. That this was as much her own fault as his did not make it easier to accept or bear. She was not now certain that she had intended him to take her seriously when she had petulantly demanded that she be allowed to return to the sanctuary of her own pink and white bedroom until her health improved: but he did. Nor when she had brushed off a calmly professional enquiry as to how she did with a brusquely peevish demand that he leave her alone had she actually meant him to take her literally at her word: but he had. She saw him rarely – he was up and off long before she rose in the morning, on call all day and half the night either at the hospital or with his local patients. He was, it seemed to her, on every committee that God or man had seen fit to constitute in Poplar and the surrounding area and what spare time he did miraculously manage to squeeze from his days was spent either with the children in the home, pursuing this new passion of his about cures for poison in the blood or some such thing or – most galling of all – with the child he called his daughter in the little room under the eaves that the whole household had dubbed the nursery. Charlotte rarely went up there herself; but the occasion that she had, and had found Ben tossing a small, squealing bundle into the air whilst Mrs Winterbottom watched in quite fatuous approval, had brought on a headache that had lasted for days.
Confused and unhappy she spent most of her time in her bedroom, her only companions a romantic novel and a box of chocolates for which since Rachel’s birth she had conceived a passion she seemed utterly unable in her misery to deny. It was the only escape she could manage. Even Peter, in her eyes the only lively and normal member of the household, who once had delighted in teasing and entertaining his pretty young sister-in-law had lost interest and abandoned her. Her only other interest was letter writing. Lacking a confidante – Cissy had never recovered, unfairly Charlotte considered, from Charlotte’s treatment of her brother – she took to writing letters to the few, far-flung female relatives whose addresses she found in an old notebook of her mother’s. Cousin Annabel, married to a dashing young lieutenant in the Indian Army. Cousin Adèle, who lived with her parson husband and a vast brood of children outside Brighton. Aunt Alice, her father’s somewhat eccentric sister, who had married – of all things – a Belgian and settled in Bruges where they ran, true to family form, a children’s home much like the Pattens’ own; indeed it had been, Charlotte remembered as she had sealed the letter, through the Patten family that Aunt Alice had actually met her Belgian groom, who had been a close friend of Doctor Will’s. Not much hope of sympathy there, then. Her letter writing in any case was no great success. Cousin Annabel’s letter disappeared without trace, and neither did Aunt Alice at first reply. Only Adèle apparently welcomed the correspondence – and that more to air her own grievances and disappointments than to lend an ear to Charlotte’s. Charlotte very soon lost interest. Adèle’s letters lay, half-read, abandoned, unanswered upon the dressing table, whilst Charlotte curled in her chair, a box of sweetmeats by her side, the exploits of the latest of Mrs Henry Bidding’s fair heroines more real to her than the exhausting, pointless activity that filled the world beyond her door.
It was on the day that things came to a head with Kate that Aunt Alice’s reply to Charlotte’s letter finally arrived from Belgium.
Any brush with Kate had come to be something that Charlotte dreaded; her problems with the girl had been, if not the worst of her worries, a niggling thorn in the side, another small unpleasantness to stretch nerves already fraught to breaking point. That Kate had never either liked or respected her she did not know – mere months ago it would not have occurred to her to care. But that Kate of all the household seemed best aware of the situation between Charlotte and her husband had been made very clear on the day of the move back into the pink bedroom.
Kate it had been who had aired the room and made up the bed; Kate’s keen and insolent eyes had watched with the unpleasant hint of a smile as Charlotte had moved her few personal possessions back on to the little kidney-shaped dressing table.
‘Not feelin’ too good, Miss?’ No one could have missed the faint thread of scorn in the words, nor the pointed lack of respect in the title.
‘I – no.’ Charlotte had neither the strength nor the energy to defend herself against the other girl’s half-recognized wholly incomprehensible malice.
‘Well,’ Kate had paused at the door, smiling, ‘you’ll find it nice an’ quiet here. No one ter bother you. An’ I expect Doctor Ben’ll find things a good deal easier too.’ And on that neat piece of insolence she had shut the door.
The incident had opened Charlotte’s eyes to the way that the girl seemed bent upon flouting her: the orders either ignored or executed in a slipshod manner; the way the bold eyes held hers with no attempt to disguise a disrespect that sometimes bordered on contempt; the way in which, if another member of the household were present in the room Kate would contrive to ignore Charlotte and take her orders from elsewhere. And on occasion, with no other ears to hear her, downright insolence.
‘I’d like you to polish the silver in the dining room please, Kate. It’s looking very dull.’
‘Mr Ralph’s asked me to black the fire in the schoolroom, miss.’ Never would the girl use the more appropriate and respectful ‘ma’am’.
‘You can do that later.’
‘I’d rather not, miss. I don’t like to upset Mr Ralph.’
And somehow, as Kate appeared to know, Charlotte could never stand up to her, but would blush and stammer and let the matter drop. Amidst her other miseries she simply could not summon the energy necessary to defend herself against the other girl’s inexplicable yet wounding hostility.
On the morning in October when Aunt Alice’s letter arrived Charlotte was breakfasting alone in the dining room. Kate, sent to the kitchen for fresh toast, performed the errand with her usual bad grace. She banged the plate on the table.
Charlotte, deep in her letter, reached for a piece of toast. Not until the butter was poised on the knife did she glance at it. ‘Kate?’
Kate, at the side table collecting empty dishes, did not turn. ‘Yes?’
‘What’s happened to this? It’s dirty.’ With a fastidious shudder Charlotte held up the toast between two fingertips.
Kate still did not turn. ‘I dunno.’
It was too much, even for Charlotte. ‘Kate! I’ll thank you to face me when I speak to you!’
The girl took her time to stack the silver dishes, turned very slowly, leaning against the side table.
‘I asked you what happened to this? See – it’s dirty. Kate – did you drop it?’
The infinitesimal hesitation was damning. ‘No.’
Charlotte stared at her in rising anger. ‘I think you did.’
The girl all but shrugged. Sighed a little.
‘Kate!’ Charlotte’s voice was rising.
‘Well, you can think all you like, can’t you? I say I didn’t.’
Charlotte jumped to her feet. She could feel the burning rise of humiliating tears behind her eyes, knew surely that the other girl sensed it. ‘Don’t be impertinent!’
‘I’m not bein’ impertinent. I’m tellin’ you—’
‘And that, I think, is quite enough.’ The quiet voice stopped them both in their tracks. ‘Kate, I think you’ll agree you’ve gone too far. You have until this evening to pack your bags. I will, of course, make up your wages and I can give you at least a fair reference. See me in the surgery at five.’
Kate stared at the figure that loomed in the doorway. ‘Doctor Ben! Oh, no – that isn’t fair!’
He regarded her levelly. ‘On the contrary. I think it very fair indeed. Give me credit for some sense, Kate. I’m neither blind nor deaf. You’re lucky to get a reference and I think you know it.’
It was total defeat. Kate scowled first at Ben, then at Charlotte, and slammed from the room.
Charlotte sank back into her seat, biting her lip. ‘Thank you.’
‘You shouldn’t have let it go so far.’ His voice was cool. ‘You let her get away with too much.’
‘Yes, I know. I couldn’t seem to help it.’
He looked at her for a long moment in silence then turned to the door.
‘Ben!’
The sharp word stopped him. He waited.
She was turning the letter over and over in her hands. She had not had time to think about it – knew instinctively that if she had she would never have found the courage to ask what she was about to ask. ‘This – this letter – it’s from Aunt Alice.’ She glanced at him. His face was politely puzzled.
‘You know – my father’s sister. She married a friend of your father’s – Anselm van Damme – they live in Belgium. In Bruges.’
‘Ah. Yes, of course.’
‘Ben – she’s invited me to visit her. Just for a couple of weeks – well,’ she blushed a little, ‘both of us actually – you and me – but you wouldn’t want to go, would you? You couldn’t leave your work. But oh Ben, please! May I go? I do so want to. I’ve been – I’ve been so very wretched lately—’ again the helpless, infuriating rise of tears. She ducked her head, the strong, black writing on the envelope blurred.
The silence this time was a long one. She felt him move from the door and sit down at the table opposite her. He held out his hand. ‘May I see the letter?’
Her hesitation was telling. Her aunt was an articulate and efficient woman; she had answered or commented upon Charlotte’s outpourings meticulously and with care, obviously sensing the need. With obvious reluctance Charlotte handed over the letter. As Ben read it she watched him, tensed as an overwound spring.
Ben took a long time. Then he raised his eyes to hers. ‘I see,’ he said quietly.
She flushed but did not drop her gaze. ‘Ben, please,’ she said again, desperation giving her courage. Her aunt’s kindly suggestion had come like a ray of light into a darkened room. To get away from here, to see new places, meet new people, and above all to be with a woman of sense and sympathy who might be able to help, to advise, to console – the idea had taken hold of the motherless Charlotte and would not relinquish its grip.
‘You couldn’t possibly go alone. And what of the child?’ The words were in no way forbidding. Charlotte’s heart lifted.
‘Well of course I’d take Rachel with me. But Nurse Winterbottom could come. There’d be no difficulty in that.’
He sucked his lip doubtfully.
‘You or Ralph could see me to Harwich,’ she rushed on, ‘and Aunt Alice says that Cousin Philippe will meet me at the other side. Bruges is only a very little way from the coast. Oh, Ben, please do say yes. I do so want to go.’
He looked at the letter again. Far from insensitive, he was well able to read between the lines. He lifted his eyes to Charlotte’s eager face. He had not seen her so animated in months. Not since the birth of the child. ‘Very well,’ he said decisively, and tried unsuccessfully to suppress a lift of his own spirits at the thought of being free, for however short a time, from the look in those pale, somehow accusing eyes, the petulant voice, the trying, childish behaviour. ‘I don’t see why not. If as you say I escort you to Harwich and your cousin meets you from the ship I don’t suppose the journey will be too arduous—’
She could not believe it. ‘You mean – I can go?’
‘Of course.’ He stood, folded the letter, handed it back to her. ‘It will do you good.’
It would, he thought with relief, do them both good.