Rachel Patten was born on a chill and overcast April day in 1907, and was, grudgingly to be sure, admitted by the midwife to be quite the prettiest newborn babe she had ever seen. Exhausted and not attempting to fight the waves of black depression that already threatened to swamp her, Charlotte Patten took one look at her daughter’s damp black curls and deep, brilliant eyes and turned away. She would never have believed she could endure such agony. The labour had been long and difficult: the memory of the last days and nights appalled her, the thought of its ever happening again was a nightmare she could not bear to contemplate. And for what? To produce this scrap for whom she felt nothing and in whom she knew with certainty she would never see anything but a reminder of humiliation, of shame and the waste of a life. Her life.
‘Come along, Mother. Don’t you want to hold the little one?’
‘No.’
The midwife, one of Hannah’s stalwarts, tutted, handed the child to Hannah who stood near by, and busied herself about Charlotte’s battered, uncaring body.
Hannah, in some awe, laid the child very carefully in the crib beside the bed. ‘I’ll fetch Ben.’ The words had a faint questioning intonation. She eyed Charlotte, waiting for some answer, some reaction even, and received none. Charlotte’s thin face was utterly withdrawn, her eyes remote. She lay like a doll beneath the brisk, ministering hands, distancing herself from the brutal realities of pain and blood and an unwanted child as she had to the best of her ability distanced herself over the past months from the knowledge that her marriage was a disaster, her life, in her own eyes, a ruin. Once, in the days before she had enclosed herself in this merciful, docile shell she had shrieked at Ben, using a street language she would not have credited herself with knowing, saying the most dreadful, the most unforgivable things in an attempt to break through her husband’s relentless good manners, his merciless and meticulous care of her to the man beneath. The man who had saved her. The man who, surely, must despise her. The man of whom she had discovered she knew nothing. The man who had married her to protect her and his family from scandal and his father from pain, who had given her the shelter of his name and absolutely nothing else. And who did not understand to what despairing depths such well-meaning imprisonment could condemn a tender soul. ‘Don’t worry,’ she had screamed, ‘with any bloody luck at all I’ll die like Henrietta did and save you all no end of trouble!’ the words a final and fatal blow to a marriage that had been a disaster for them both from the beginning.
‘Lively enough little thing,’ the midwife said now, busying herself with the child, ‘and pretty as a picture. I must say – small she may be, but she certainly looks healthy enough. Especially for a premature child—’ She glanced slyly at Charlotte.
Charlotte, with very little effort, ignored her. From outside the door came the murmur of voices. She shut her eyes. Go away. Please. All of you. Go away. Leave me alone.
‘Charlotte?’ Ben’s voice was quiet.
She tried to keep her eyes closed, tried to retreat into darkness.
‘Charlotte.’
Very reluctantly she opened her eyes. He loomed above her, enormous, craggy, unsmiling. He laid professional fingers to her wrist. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Sore.’
He nodded. ‘It will pass. It was a hard birth. You were very brave.’
She said nothing.
Hannah stood beside him, the swathed bundle of the child in her arms. ‘Your daughter,’ she smiled. ‘Charlotte, she’s truly lovely, just look at those eyes—’
Ben took the baby. Charlotte looked away. The room was hot and stuffy. Airless. Charlotte thought – hoped – that the struggle to breathe might at any minute defeat her.
Hannah was making absurdly aunt-like clucking noises, her long skinny finger playing with the tiny curled hands. ‘Oh, Ben – isn’t she lovely?’
‘Yes. She is.’
That brought Charlotte’s head round. She looked at her husband. He was watching the child, his dark, slate-grey eyes intent upon the small face. ‘Yes. She is,’ he said again, very softly.
‘Let Mother have the baby now, Doctor Patten,’ the midwife was brisk. It wasn’t often she had the opportunity to order Ben Patten around, and she was making the most of the chance. ‘We must get the little mite feeding.’
Charlotte clenched her teeth. She couldn’t. She could not.
Ben leaned to her with the child. With rigid care she accepted the small, warm bundle. But as the midwife began to fumble with the buttons and ribbons of her nightdress she pulled away with a sudden snap of surprising strength. ‘No! I’ll do it myself. In a moment.’
Ben’s smile faded. He straightened. ‘Best if we go, perhaps. Father would like to visit with you later, and Ralph. Will that be all right?’
‘Of course.’
‘After you’ve slept.’
She nodded. They might have been strangers exchanging pleasantries on a railway station. The baby coughed a little, mewed faintly. Charlotte, despite her every effort felt her mouth tighten in distaste; and knew that, before he turned away, Ben had seen it.
‘Now, Mother,’ the midwife said, ominously crisp, ‘let’s give baby her first feed, shall we?’
Charlotte fumbled with the buttons of her nightdress. She wanted nothing so much as to sleep; to turn her back on the world, on this monstrous thing that had happened to her, on this child she did not want, and sleep. The child nuzzled her breast. Charlotte stiffened, jaw rigid with revulsion. The small mouth opened. Charlotte shrank back into the pillows.
‘No, no—!’ The nurse leaned forward, taking the small head in her remorselessly capable hand, forcing the little, wet mouth to the nipple. ‘There. That’s better.’
Blinded by tears, her lower lip clamped painfully between her teeth Charlotte endured the suckling, hating it. Like a limpet the child clung. Like a leech. ‘I can’t!’ Charlotte said suddenly, ‘I can’t!’ She jerked the nipple from the greedy mouth, gasping at the pain of it. Tears ran down her thin face. ‘Please – I can’t—’
The midwife, unmarried and childless, had faced – and outfaced – such tantrums before in young mothers. ‘Don’t be a silly girl now. Of course you can. You’ll get used to it. Here. Try again.’
Charlotte was crying uncontrollably. In two days of labour she had not shed a tear, had in fact even at the worst times barely made a sound at all. But now the dam had burst, and she could not stop herself. The child, deprived of the nipple and sensing her mother’s distress screamed shrilly, repetitively, wailing on each short, newly taken breath. Charlotte was trembling, near hysteria. ‘Take her away! I can’t! I won’t! Take her away!’
‘Oh, come now – what a fuss!’ Very firmly and with no feeling whatsoever the other woman thrust the baby’s face back to the breast. The small mouth fastened again upon the dug. A thin, hot wire of intolerable pain skewered the most private depths of Charlotte’s body, defiling her. Her womb contracted agonizingly as she tensed against it. The rhythmic suckling of the child disgusted her. Milky liquid ran down the child’s chin, drenching Charlotte’s nightdress. The midwife’s hand was still firmly upon the baby’s head, forcing it to the breast. Charlotte clenched her eyes tight shut, wanting to struggle, to scream, to break free from this nightmare; instead she sobbed brokenly, like a child herself, overwrought, overtired, desperately unhappy.
‘There you are, you see? Of course you can do it. Now – try the other side – just for a moment or two.’
The room was dark when Charlotte woke. Her body felt bruised; she ached as if she had been beaten. A small fire glowed in the hearth and a lamp burned low beside the bed. In the dark well of the cradle the child slept, sniffling. Charlotte’s head ached and so, intolerably, did her engorged breasts. Her eyes were swollen and sore. She lay for a moment, apathetic and disorientated, until a faint movement in the quiet told her that she was not, as she had thought, alone. ‘Who’s that?’
There was the slightest moment of hesitation. ‘It’s me, ma’am.’ The voice was cool, neutral and instantly recognizable.
‘Sally?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
With an effort, Charlotte turned her head tiredly upon the pillow. She could see now the outline of the other girl’s head, limned by fireglow, the mass of brown hair piled and coiled neatly, the long slender neck and sharp profile very still. Through all the months of Charlotte’s pregnancy these two in unspoken and reluctant conspiracy had avoided each other, each made uncomfortable, and worse than uncomfortable, by a bitter shared memory, an unwanted knowledge, an irredeemable debt that bound each to the other in a strange, unwelcome but unavoidable sisterhood. ‘What time is it?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Nearly eight. Miss Brown’s gone down to supper. She wanted someone to sit with you.’ Over the past months Sally’s speech, under the tutelage of Hannah and Ralph had become clearer and more carefully enunciated. ‘She said you wouldn’t wake for hours yet.’
Some small, wry spark of humour stirred. Charlotte smiled wearily. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have offered?’
She saw in the darkness the faint glimmer of a smile. ‘Oh, I didn’t offer. I was told. Our Miss Brown doesn’t take kindly to “no” for an answer. Can I get you anything?’
‘Thank you. I’m very thirsty. Perhaps a glass of water?’
Sally turned up the lamp, poured the water, helped Charlotte to struggle to a sitting position, propping her with pillows. She had, despite herself, been shocked at the sight of the thin, haggard face on the pillow. Even with the ordeal of childbirth safely over Charlotte looked ill, her skin sickly pale, her eyes sunk deep into shadows. She gave Charlotte the glass, then turned to look at the sleeping child. ‘The little one’s lovely,’ she found herself saying, ‘everyone’s saying what a beauty she’ll be.’
There was a long, stony silence. ‘I don’t care.’ Charlotte’s voice was flat, entirely without expression. And then, ‘It would have been better if she’d died. And me with her.’
Sally’s head moved sharply round at that. In the world she still thought of as hers death came too often and too easily to speak so. ‘That’s a wicked thing to say,’ she said very quietly.
‘I suppose it is. But I don’t care. It’s true. You and I know it.’ A small, pale hand played restlessly with the fringe of the bedspread. ‘You, I and my husband.’ The words were barely audible.
Sally shook her head sharply. ‘That isn’t so. It’s funny—’ she hesitated for a moment.
‘What?’
‘It – well – it seems to me he’s pleased as punch. He can’t leave her be.’
Charlotte did not reply, but her head moved on the pillow, a tired negative.
Sally moved away from the bed, sat, straight backed and a little awkward, in the low nursing chair by the fire.
‘Sally?’ The word broke an openly difficult silence.
Sally turned a wary head. Ever since that day that she and Toby had slipped back into the Bear unchallenged and apparently unnoticed, her position in the house had been an odd one. She was servant certainly – she willingly fetched and carried, scrubbed and polished, took care of the children in the home, and she was paid for it. But Ralph, simply and undisguisedly delighted at her change of heart, was teaching her, with Toby, to read and to write and Hannah, sensing a deep-seated if wary interest in those things about which she herself felt so passionately, had sought her out in growing and enthusiastic friendship, had spent painstaking and rewarding hours in discussion and explanation. And always Ben Patten’s unspoken, somewhat distant but none the less quite open patronage had set her apart from the other serving-girls – a fact that she knew had in no way endeared her to the spiteful Kate. But yet, with all but Hannah and Doctor Will she was uncomfortable. Ralph for all his kindness she still eyed with some distrust when Toby’s bright head was between them. Of Charlotte’s and Ben’s marriage, knowing its roots, she guessed too much, and was uncomfortable with them both. Peter’s cavalier friendliness baffled her entirely. Like a young animal set loose in a jungle not its own she watched always for threat or danger despite the apparent good will that undoubtedly surrounded her. Even Doctor Will’s unfailingly good-tempered benevolence and Hannah’s friendship she sometimes eyed with caustic caution. They were not her people. And to Ben and Charlotte she must, knowing what she knew, constitute a threat. Why should they offer her the hand of friendship? How long before gratitude wore thin and she found herself jobless and back in the tenements? And – worm of a thought, hardly ever leaving her – without Toby? It was in self defence that she had avoided Charlotte for all these past months; indeed had she not been assured that she slept and should continue to sleep, not even Miss Brown’s forceful ways would have persuaded her into the room this evening. The last thing she wanted or was prepared for was a personal conversation.
‘Sally?’ Charlotte asked again, unable to see the other girl’s expression in the gloom.
‘Yes?’
‘Tell me – are you happy here?’ Exactly what prompted the question even Charlotte was not certain. Each glimpse of Sally’s face over these past months, each sight of the sharp features and the long-lashed narrow eyes, each sound of that distinctive voice had, just as Sally had suspected, brought back with brutal force the memory of fear, of pain and of shameful humiliation. Ben’s apparently heartless determination to keep the girl with them had been a constant cause of conflict in a marriage that had been unstable from the start. She had begged him to settle Sally elsewhere, to give her money, offer her a ticket to America – anything – but to put her where Charlotte would not be subject to the constant reminder of her presence. She flinched still when she remembered the chill anger that her pleading had aroused. ‘Are you so completely self-centred?’ Ben had asked with ill-concealed distaste. ‘Do you have no thought for anyone but yourself? The girl risked her life to save you – she knew that if you didn’t. She nearly died for it. And you’d turn her and the child who’s probably the only thing in the world she’s ever loved into the streets with a few pounds and a promise? Charlotte, for God’s sake, do you know what you’re suggesting? Do you know what would inevitably happen to her, to the child, if we abandon them now? And for what? For your comfort?’
She had watched him, cowed to silence by his anger, only the voice in her head arguing – pleading – but Ben, what of me? What of us? What of the child she knows is a bastard? What if she’s spiteful? Think of the harm she could do. Why do you take her part against me, your wife?
Yet waiting now for the answer to her question she had to admit that Ben had been right in his estimate of the girl’s character. It could not be said that by word or by deed Sally had ever given her cause for worry. On the contrary it was quite obvious that the girl was as awkward in her company as was Charlotte in hers. She sat now, a small straight line of thought between her eyes, considering the question she had been asked.
‘Yes,’ she said at last slowly. ‘Happier than I expected. Everyone’s very kind. An’ Toby loves it.’
‘Ralph says he’s very clever?’
Sally’s face tightened almost imperceptibly. ‘Seems so, yes. He’s jumped a class in school, so they tell me.’
‘He’ll be going in for the scholarship in a couple of years’ time I daresay?’
Sally said nothing.
Some compulsion of curiosity pushed Charlotte to probe further despite the other girl’s obvious reluctance. At least talking took her mind from the child who snuffled and murmured in the crib between them. ‘And you? Hannah told me you’d been going to some meetings with her?’
Sally nodded, a faint movement in the darkness. The baby stirred in the cot. Charlotte turned her head away. ‘I could never see the point of it all,’ she admitted. ‘I went a couple of times – to meetings with that friend of Hannah’s – what’s her name? Sylvia something?’
‘Pankhurst. Sylvia Pankhurst.’ Nothing in Sally’s quiet voice revealed the intensity of feeling the name evoked. When Sylvia Pankhurst spoke, she spoke directly to the hearts and minds not of the educated middle-class women so dear to her campaigning mother and sister, founders and leaders of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union, but of the women who knew what it was to work a shift as long as their menfolk’s and then to come home to the soulbreaking battle of running a home in a crumbling tenement, of feeding too many mouths on too little income, of fighting dirt and the disease and death that so often struck at the children. She spoke to the likes of Sally Smith. And her words made a compelling sense.
‘Oh, yes. That’s right. Pankhurst.’
The baby moved again, caught her breath a little as if preparing to cry. Charlotte discovered that her hands were tensely clenched upon the counterpane, clenched so tightly that they ached with the effort. With infinite care she forced them to relax, uncurling her fingers and flexing them gently. ‘Did you go with them to any of the demonstrations at the Houses of Parliament last year?’
‘No. But I went on the march in February.’ The demonstrations at the House of Commons had been during the previous year; Sally had resisted all Hannah’s blandishments until Christmas, had indeed with the rest of the servant household been mildly amused at Miss Hannah’s antics with her disreputable friends. Not until, with wary misgiving, she had at last allowed herself to be persuaded one winter’s night to accompany Hannah to a small meeting in a local church hall – a meeting at which Sylvia Pankhurst had spoken with her passionate, simple and flawless conviction of the righting of wrongs, the lighting of darkness, of the radical transformation of an imbalanced society – had she even begun to understand Hannah’s commitment to her cause: but the conversion, once brought about, had been of the order of that of Paul on the road to Damascus. That there might be any possibility of creating a world where women ceased to be the chattels of their menfolk, had rights and freedoms of their own, had never so much as crossed Sally’s mind before. To hear Sylvia’s level yet passionate logic, to understand that she, Sally Smith, was being called to make some contribution of her own, would be valued as an ally and a friend by those who were working to this astounding end had amazed and excited her. She had attended more meetings, asked more questions, and had discovered that the answers and ideas she heard made a wonderful sense. With Hannah she had marched proudly behind the banners through dreadful February weather – that had given the parade the nickname of the Mud March – from Hyde Park to Exeter Hall in the Strand. There she had listened enthralled to Mr Keir Hardie – already a hero of hers through the devotion of the not easily-impressed Dickson men. This dedicated Labour leader had made history fifteen years before when he had proudly, in cloth cap and tweed jacket, taken his place as the first representative of the working man in the people’s Parliament at Westminster. The more fiery Mr Israel Zangwill had also spoken and with his unashamed exhortations to militancy had brought the women to their feet in a rapturous storm of applause. ‘A majority in Parliament have promised to vote for women’s suffrage. But whom have they promised? Women! And women have no votes. Therefore the MPs do not take them seriously. You see the vicious circle? In order for women to get votes they must have votes already. And so the men will bemock and befool them from session to session. Who can wonder if, tired of these gay deceivers, they begin to take the law into their own hands? And public opinion – I warn the Government – public opinion is with the women.’ Sally had cheered with the rest, grinning at her nearest neighbour, waving her home-made white flag with blithe vigour. The talk of tactics, of by-elections, of constituencies being the arena of battle had passed her by, but Zangwill’s oratory had to her own surprise brought an emotional burning to her eyes when he had touched on matters closer to her own experience. ‘And so to these myriads of tired women who rise in the raw dawn and troop to their cheerless factories and who, when twilight falls, return not to rest but to the labours of a squalid household, to these the thought of women’s suffrage, which comes as a sneer to the man about town, comes as a hope and as a prayer.’ Hannah’s grip on Sally’s arm had been unconsciously fierce with excitement, her plain face had been lit with dedicated enthusiasm, ‘Today’s woman cries “I fight for justice! – And I shall have it!”’
Sally and Hannah had not been the only ones to come to their feet at that: and three days later, again at Hannah’s side, Sally had been in the crowds that had attended the first ‘Women’s Parliament’ at Caxton Hall and who, on hearing that yet again the King’s Speech made no reference to votes for women had promptly passed a resolution of their own and marched with it to the House of Commons. In the ensuing fracas Sally had not only acquitted herself with commendable – not to say, perhaps regrettably, practised – competence, but had succeeded by dint of quick thinking and a sharpish turn of speed in preventing both herself and her mentor from being taken into custody by an over-enthusiastic and beefy young constable, a favour for which Hannah had thanked her ruefully but half regretfully.
‘Strike a light!’ Sally had laughed, panting, exhilarated by the battle, gathering handsful of the hair that had slithered about her shoulders and stuffing them into her hat, ‘Next time I’ll leave you to the Rozzers!’ and then had stopped, struck to silence by the echo of her own easy insolence to a woman who was, after all, her employer’s daughter. But Hannah had laughed, unaware, and slipped an arm through hers. ‘Come on – let’s go to Brown’s for a pot of tea. We deserve it.’
‘Wasn’t Sylvia Pankhurst one of those who were arrested that day?’ Charlotte asked now, idly curious, breaking into the silence.
‘Yes, she was. Miss Hannah went to visit her.’ And had come away from the forbidding pile of Holloway, Sally remembered, more than a little subdued.
The child in the cot whimpered a little and then suddenly set up a hungry bawling that set Charlotte’s teeth on edge and strung her nerves to breaking point. Her breasts ached and her nipples were sore. She hated the sound that the baby made; thin, desperate, demanding.
‘Well, well, and what’s happening here, might I ask? Why no lights when baby’s ready for supper? Come along – Sally, isn’t it? – jump to it. Lamps, please. And hot water for baby’s bath.’ The officious Miss Brown swept into the room on a cloud of starch and carbolic. Charlotte lay back and closed her eyes, fighting panic and a stirring of physical sickness.
‘Now, Mother—’ Relentlessly brisk, Miss Brown picked up the screaming child and dumped her into Charlotte’s stiffly unwilling arms. ‘Off we go. Supper time.’
Sally, escaping the too-warm sickly smelling room as soon as was decently possible, fled to the sanctuary of her own small bedroom. The Pattens did not, as did so many others, work their people from dawn to dusk and sleep them in attic dormitories that were airless ovens in summer and ice-boxes in winter. Each girl’s hours were strictly and fairly laid down and each had a tiny room to herself in the huge old stable block, now the ever-expanding children’s home. Sally’s room, though hat-box small, looked down over the little walled garden where Mrs Briggs did her gallant best to nurture a few herbs and vegetables – heritage, she often said a little wistfully, of a country childhood – and it was far enough from the road to be relatively quiet. It was simply decorated with pale, stippled walls and a whitewashed ceiling, and even more simply furnished. It held a narrow bed, a wash stand, a chest of drawers and a chair, all sturdy scrubbed wood that shone with beeswax. The fireplace was minute, but the little box of coal and wood that sat beside it was well stocked at all times of the year. On one wall was an ancient, fly-specked mirror, on another a faded embroidered text, much embellished with ill-executed violets and roses. She knew the words by heart, knew every stitch of their construction. ‘Blessed Are The Pure In Heart, For They Shall See God.’ In those months that Sally had struggled to master her letters, those words, together and separately, so tantalizingly hung above her head as she lay in bed, had been a spur of the kind that could never have been imagined by their original creator, for she had refused to ask their meaning, had waited for the triumphant day when she could painstakingly spell them out for herself. Beside the bed was a small set of shelves upon which lay a battered bible – which for the present was still way beyond her reading skills – a book of Aesop’s fables lent to her by Ralph and printed in clear strong letters, and the big book of fairy tales with which Toby, to her astonishment, had presented her on the afternoon of that day nearly eight months before when they had crept back into the awakening house like thieves in reverse, hastily hiding their bundles, covering the traces of their attempted flight. ‘Mr Ralph says you can keep it,’ he had said of the book, nonchalantly.
‘Why? What would he give me something like that for?’
He had lifted a small shoulder. ‘I dunno. But ’e says we – you – can have it. Come on, Sal – open it – find the one about the three little pigs.’
It was lying open now, on the bed where she had left it, the ruler she still used to follow the words ready on the counterpane beside it. Not to anyone had she admitted how much sheer pleasure she got from this hard-won achievement of reading and writing. From the frustration of the first weeks, when Toby’s quick mind had appeared to absorb everything and anything it encountered as surely as hers had rejected it, she had moved slowly and stubbornly through the first faint glimmerings of understanding to a breakthrough that had been like the sun rising upon a night’s darkness. She would never, she suspected, read with the easy facility that Toby already seemed to have acquired – but if not swift her progress had been sure, and the words and the shades of their meaning were a joy and a delight to her. She settled now beside the small fire that had been lit against the unseasonal spring chill, a thin finger marking the words as she read, a frown of concentration on her face. She had not, however, managed more than a couple of lines when a noise by the doorway, the slight creaking of a hinge snapped her head up irritably. Not Bron again, surely? Did the girl never want to spend a moment on her own?
‘Who’s that?’
There was a small scuffling sound, a smothered giggle.
Not Bron.
Lips twitching to laughter despite herself, she laid the book down quietly and crept to the door, flinging it open to reveal two small children and a fiercely struggling bundle of black fur. The little girl shrieked as the door flew open and collapsed into helpless giggles. The boy, who was clutching the almost demented kitten apparently totally unaware both of the small animal’s struggles and of the damage the tiny, razor sharp claws were inflicting, grinned broadly. ‘We brought Fluff to see you.’
She eyed the angry animal doubtfully. ‘Did you indeed? He doesn’t seem very pleased about it.’
‘Yes ’e is. ‘Course ’e is. ’E wanted ter come.’
‘Really?’
The urchin nodded.
Sally eyed the cheeky face, trying not to laugh. ‘Any particular reason for that?’
‘I ’spec’ ’e wanted to ’ear a story,’ the child said, straight faced. His sister burst into embarrassed giggles again, hiding her face in her pinafore.
‘I see. Well – you’d best come in, hadn’t you?’
The two children scuttled into the room, stood together waiting, expectancy in their identical pale blue eyes. The kitten struggled with manic determination.
‘I think perhaps you’d better let Fluff go, don’t you?’
‘All right.’ Unceremoniously the child dropped the little cat, which landed on its feet and streaked under the bed.
‘A story, you said?’ Sally asked pensively.
Two small heads nodded in unison.
‘Any particular story?’
‘One of yours,’ the little girl said, ‘not out of a book. A twin story.’ Then, overcome at her own temerity she buried her scarlet face again in her apron.
Sally surveyed them. Two months before she had been in the room known as the nursery when Ben Patten had brought these two in, having found them scavenging, half-starved, in the hospital rubbish dump. Sullen and savagely defiant the boy had been filthy, his skin covered in sores and scabs, his small frame skeletal from undernourishment. The girl, obviously his twin, had been as bad, her long hair matted and evil smelling, eyes and nose running with mucus. The boy had snarled like a small animal. The girl had said nothing.
‘Well, well,’ Hannah had said collectedly, ‘here’s a handful and no mistake.’
She had been right. The boy, Bertie, who now watched Sally with sharp, hopeful, healthily cheeky eyes, had bitten Ben, Ralph and Hannah and scratched Sally’s arms to ribbons as they had bathed him. For a fortnight he had spoken nothing but obscenities; his sister – Annie – had spoken not at all. Even Ralph had begun to despair of them. They had wolfed the food they were given, had refused to use the lavatories provided for the children but slunk into the yard at night, had screamed and fought like wild animals if any attempt was made to part them even for a moment. They had refused utterly to respond to a friendly overture.
Until the day that Sally, sitting with four or five of the younger children who did not yet attend school, had begun to tell a story.
It had been an uneasy movement amongst her small audience that had first alerted her: heads had turned, one or two of the youngsters had squeezed a little closer to her. Bertie and Annie had not at that time been the home’s most popular inmates. Sally had looked up. The two children were standing sullenly by the open door, neither in nor out of the room, Annie as always a step behind her brother, who stood truculently, four-square on his skinny, scabbed legs, his thin face warily hostile as eyes turned towards him. They had looked like two abandoned and savage wild creatures, and Sally’s heart had ached for them. But instinctively she had ignored them, turning back to her young audience, inviting their attention with a small, dramatic gesture.
‘—so – along comes this little lad and says, “Oi! That’s my green bean you got there—!”’
‘What was ’is name, Miss?’
Sally looked up in comical surprise. ‘What – the bean?’
The child who had interrupted squealed with laughter. ‘No! The little boy!’
‘Ah.’ Sally put a thoughtful finger to her lip. ‘I think – yes I think it was something like – Albert. No. Posher than that it was, now I stop to think about it. Bertram. That’s it. Bertram. Of course everyone called him Bertie. He’d almost forgotten his real name. He had a sister—’ she had stopped again, as if thinking. The two at the door were watching her, faces expressionless. Sally kept her eyes upon the upturned, eager faces in front of her. ‘Rose-Anne her name was. Pretty name. But everyone called her Annie, of course.’
By the time Ralph had come to join them an hour or so later the twins had been sitting some distance from the group, their backs firmly and defensively to the wall, but none the less listening intently to the improvised story of their namesakes and the rest of the children, equally enthralled by the unlikely adventures of the two Sally had dubbed the Terrible Twins were happily ignoring them. It had been the least disruptive hour the two had spent since being brought to the Bear.
‘Well done!’ With quiet warmth Ralph had put an arm about Sally’s shoulders and hugged her. ‘I truly was beginning to feel that we were never going to break through to those two.’
‘They didn’t say much.’
‘They didn’t have to. You’ll see. They’ll come round now.’
And they had. The breach once made, Sally had watched, impressed despite herself, Ben Patten’s gentle but determined conquering of the twins’ fear and hostility, Ralph’s cheerful and steady refusal to accept continued ill-behaviour. Bron – surprisingly – had mothered them, Kate – not surprisingly – would have nothing to do with them. But their steady favourite since that day had been Sally; and to her own surprise she had been pleased and touched by their fierce devotion. They laughed now with an ease she would have thought impossible a month or so ago, vying with each other with outrageous ideas for new stories. They had, she knew, been saved in the true and basic sense of the word. And in admitting that she knew that she herself was beginning to lose her distrust of the Pattens and their motives. No one could have watched the change in these two unmoved. If the home never did anything else, here was justification for the Pattens and their crusade; and she had been a part of it. Ralph and Hannah had both been openly delighted. Ben had gone out of his way to thank her for her help and even to ask her advice. ‘Can we separate them, do you think? Perhaps at least get them to do things rather more individually? If they are eventually to go to school they’ll have to get used to being apart sometimes.’
Sally had shaken her head firmly. Too well she knew the world from which these children had come. ‘No. Not yet. Not for a long time, I should think. Wait till they’re ready. They’ve no one but each other. Try to split them and you’ll lose them.’
Her advice had been taken, in this case and in others. Realizing that her knowledge and understanding of these children was grounded in a harsh experience that he himself lacked, Ralph in particular had often come to her with a difficult child, and even though her own doubts of him with regard to Toby were never far from the surface she enjoyed working with him and with the children.
‘Well now,’ she said now, the Terrible Twins extricated once more from a tricky situation and ready to do battle another day, ‘enough’s enough, I’d say. Time for supper.’
‘O-oh!’ The protest, as everything else with these two, was in perfect unison.
She clapped her hands. ‘No argument! Off you go. Or Mrs Briggs’ll have my guts for garters!’
Grinning at that, they turned as a tap sounded at the door and Hannah popped her head around it. ‘Sorry – are you busy?’
‘No. They’re just leaving. Come on, you kids – off you go—’
‘Can we come agen termorrer?’
She grinned and ruffled a bright head. ‘Only if you eat every scrap of your supper, including your cabbage, and then spend a whole hour learning your letters.’
‘An hour?’ Bertie was aghast.
‘An hour,’ Sally said repressively.
Annie grabbed her brother’s arm. ‘All right,’ she said valiantly, ‘we’ll do it. If we can come back termorrer.’
Hannah smiled as they tumbled past her. ‘What a difference in those two! I’ve still got the scars where that little devil bit me – yet look at him – you’ve got him eating out of your hand!’
Sally smiled. ‘We understand each other, him an’ me.’
‘I came to bring you this.’ Hannah dropped a dark-printed sheet of paper on to the chest-of-drawers. ‘It’s the pamphlet Sylvia was talking about the other day. You said you wanted to read it.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
Hannah turned back to the door. Stopped. Stood for a moment pushing distractedly at a cascade of loosened hairpins. ‘Sally?’
Sally looked enquiringly.
‘You – you’re sure you want to come with me tomorrow? To the meeting?’
‘Of course.’
Uncharacteristically hesitant, and still fiddling with the hairpins, Hannah said, ‘You do know – you do realize – that there could be real trouble?’
Staunchly Sally grinned. ‘Can’t be worse than a bad Saturday night down the Commercial Road.’
Hannah laughed a little but sobered quickly. Faint lines of tension around her eyes made her look older than her twenty-two years. With sudden insight Sally saw a nervousness that verged on fear in the plain, likeable face. On the following day Mr Sydney Buxton, MP was to speak in Poplar. Hannah Patten was one of the small brave band pledged to question him on the Liberal Government’s so far empty promises concerning the enfranchisement of women. Up and down the country at such meetings women – and men too – were exercising their constitutional right to ask such questions. And up and down the country reaction had been brutal. Questioners had been evicted violently from meetings while the police looked on and did nothing. Dragged by the hair, punched and kicked by the stewards, the women and their allies were sometimes badly injured. Only last week a young woman’s arm had been broken as she was forcibly ejected from a Cabinet Minister’s public meeting.
‘Ralph’s coming,’ Hannah said, ‘but Ben can’t, though he wanted to, of course. He’s absolutely got to go to the Health Committee meeting – after fighting all these years for compulsory medical examinations in schools he can’t miss the meeting where they’re discussing how to implement the new law. Given half a chance quite a few would ignore it if they could, as he well knows.’
‘What time’s the Buxton meeting?’
‘Six thirty. We plan to be there by six. We need good seats.’
‘I’ll be ready.’
Hannah still hesitated, a warrior more than ready to risk her own neck but not so ready to be responsible for another’s. ‘You are sure?’
Sally laughed, picked up a wide white sash that hung over the wash stand. ‘Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Bin a long time since I’ve bin in a rough house!’ she smiled mischievously at Hannah’s doubtful expression. ‘Look – I’ve even done a bit of needlework for the occasion.’ She held out the sash. Hannah took it, laughed softly at the tiny words embroidered repeatedly around it. ‘Votes for Women.’ She shook her head, laughing still. ‘We aren’t supposed to give away who we are until we ask our question. We don’t want to be thrown out before we open our mouths.’
Sally took the sash back, held it about her waist. ‘There. You’d never know what it says.’ The needlework, in dark green to match the dress Sally intended to wear, looked simply like a decorative edging.
Hannah eyed her in surprised amusement. ‘I do believe you’re looking forward to it!’
Sally took a moment to consider that. ‘Yes. I do believe I am.’
When Hannah had left, still patting distractedly at her tumbling hair, Sally walked to the window, the sash still dangling from her fingers. Josie, a frequent and welcome visitor to this cheery little room had called the day before and had voiced much the same doubts. ‘There’s been real trouble at these meetings, Sal. All over the place. It’s been in the papers. Are you sure you should go?’
Sally had cocked a jaunty eyebrow, inviting laughter. ‘Sure? Of course I am. Blimey, girl, never let it be said that Sally Smith left a mate in the lurch. Perish the thought!’
A mate? She smiled a little at the unlikely thought, stood looking down into the tiny, neat patch of garden below. The black kitten, seeing the coast was clear had crawled from beneath the bed and fawned about her ankles, purring anxiously. Absentmindedly she bent to pick it up, soothing the ruffled fur. Thoughts of Josie had brought thoughts of her brother Dan; with whom the last time she had seen him, despite all her efforts and to Josie’s clear distress, she had quarrelled bitterly. For days she had been trying not to think of it, but the words that had been spoken so angrily still rang in her head, and try as she might she could not dismiss them. Dan – solid, dependable, obstinate and unimaginative Dan – had asked her to marry him. And she, inevitably, had said no. His disappointment and hurt, his incomprehension, had been painful to see. ‘But why, Sal? I’ve got a steady job – I’d care for you well. An’ Toby too. I’ve savings. We could buy a little house—’
‘Dan!’
‘I’d be good to you, Sal, you know I would.’
‘Oh, of course I know it!’
‘Well then? What is it? Is it that – you don’t care for me?’
She had looked at him in despair. If she could not entirely explain to herself why she knew so surely that she should not marry him then how, without hurt, could she possibly explain it to him? ‘Of course I care for you, Dan. You know it. As a friend. A dear and trusted friend. But – oh, Dan, I’m not ready to marry. Not you. Not anyone.’
Stubbornly he had held his ground. ‘Strikes me you don’t know what you do want. Give yourself a bit of time – time to think about it.’
‘No.’ He had flinched at the sharpness of the word. She had tried to force her voice to quiet, to reason. ‘No, Dan. It would do no good. I’m not a kid. I could think till kingdom come, and it still wouldn’t be right. I know it.’
He had turned from her then, a painful bitterness in his eyes. ‘What then? Too good for us now, are you? Is that it?’
‘Dan, no, of course that isn’t it.’
He had been too hurt, too humiliated to listen. High colour had risen in the blunt-featured face. ‘Dan Dickson’s not good enough for you I suppose? With all this readin’ and writin’ and speechifyin’, set your sights on somethin’ higher, have you?’
Quick and justifiable anger had stirred. ‘That’s a stupid thing to say.’
‘You think so? Well, seems to me Sal Smith that it’s not just the way you talk’s changed over the past few months—’
‘What do you mean? What the hell do you mean?’
He was too far gone in misery to curb his tongue, anger and mortification had fed his disappointment and turned it into uncharacteristic and irrational fury. ‘Gadding about with them votes for women females who’re old enough and ugly enough to know better! Making a spectacle of yourself – marching through the streets banging a bloody drum! I tell you straight I think you must have taken clean leave of your senses – you an’ them hoity toity new pals of yours.’
Sally’s own uncertain temper had slipped its leash. She winced now to remember the things she had said. Josie, hearing raised voices, had come in to try to calm them, but too late. The damage, as so often when tongues ran ahead of hearts and brains, was done. She sighed now. She had not, she knew, handled the situation well. She had not wanted to quarrel with Dan. Yet still his attitude to her suffragette friends stirred anger in her many days later. All the old, mindless arguments had been flung at her – the women who were ready to fight for political strength as a way to freedom were nothing but frustrated spinsters who couldn’t catch a husband, or man-haters who wouldn’t know what to do with one if they found him. Dry, unwomanly creatures. An outrage to the natural scheme of things, their aims nothing short of anarchic. They deserved nothing so much as a good thrashing from husband, or father, or any other good, strong – male – arm within reach. She had heard it all before, of course, to her amazement from some women as well as from men, but never in such a personal way and never from someone whose opinion she had until now always respected. Dan had, she learned later from Josie, regretted the hasty words almost as soon as they had been spoken, but spoken they had been and the damage could not be undone; the damage, that was, to her relationship with Dan, for if anything the incident had strengthened her feelings for the cause and for those who fought for it. ‘We fight’, Sylvia Pankhurst had said at the last meeting she had attended above the baker’s shop in Bow, ‘against ignorance, against cynicism and against wanton prejudice – and we shall win!’
She lifted the sash she still held and surveyed it pensively. Never in her life before had she felt herself to be anything but a lone individual, pitted against a hostile world. This simple and slightly absurd piece of embroidered material symbolized something that even now, as she contemplated it, astounded her.
Hannah woke after a restless night to mixed feelings of excitement and dread. This was The Day. Her turn had come at last.
It was very early, the strengthening grey light of a spring dawn seeped gently through the closed curtains. The house was still. In the distance Charlotte’s baby cried, a thin, tentative wail that was swiftly hushed. Hannah threw back the bedclothes and padded on bare feet to the window, drawing the curtains on a morning fresh and breezy and – even in these dingy London streets – bright as a new pin. The narrow road below was empty apart from a stalking cat. She watched as the animal picked its delicate way from doorway to doorway. Then, restless and unsettled, she moved about the room, touched her hairbrush, aimlessly rearranged the dressing table with its assortment of all but unused bottles and jars, its red velvet pin cushion into which, untidily, were stuck haphazardly half a dozen hatpins. She stood for a moment, brush in hand, tidying the jars, rearranging the pins. Then she slowly lifted her head to study with strange care her reflection in the mirror. Her face was pale and her eyes looked tired after a night of shallow and disturbed sleep. The shining cloak of her heavy hair hung about her shoulders, dark against the rumpled frills of her high-necked white nightgown. She did not, she decided wryly, look at this moment like any kind of crusader, let alone one preparing to martyr herself for her cause. Behind her, upon the wardrobe door, she could see the neat dark suit she had chosen to wear for the meeting this evening. She lifted her chin, composing her features to a severe and undaunted expression. ‘Mr Buxton,’ she asked her reflection softly, ‘will the Government – no, will this Liberal Government – give votes to women?’ Her voice sounded odd in the quiet of the room. She tried the question again, with a different inflection. Tried to imagine a crowded hall. A possibly hostile audience. ‘I will do it,’ she said suddenly. ‘I will!’ and with an odd lightening of her heart she began to brush her hair with long, sure strokes.
She was dressed and ready long before it was time to leave for the meeting. All day as she had gone about her normal tasks – dispensing the neatly packed baskets of milk to the mothers at the depot, visiting a woman in Angel Street whose new baby, the youngest child of eight and not by a long chalk the strongest was the latest to fall victim to the epidemic of measles that was spreading like fire through the crowded tenements, drinking afternoon tea with a Charlotte whose silence and tense, peaky looks disturbed even Hannah’s already over-preoccupied mind – there had been a constant, small, nervous stirring at the pit of her stomach that had made eating difficult and sitting still impossible.
‘Will this Liberal Government give votes to women?’
She would ask her question, and she would stand her ground until it was answered, or until they tired of her and threw her out.
She knew too well which of those two alternatives was most likely.
Promptly at six she, Ralph and Sally set out for the hall where the meeting was to be held, quietly finding themselves seats just a few rows back from the front and in the centre of the row where it would be difficult for anyone to reach her from the aisles. Flanked by the other two she sat, straight-backed and calm, as the hall filled around her. Upon the bunting-draped platform were a long table and half a dozen chairs. Jugs of water and tall glasses were set ready. The back of the stage was adorned by large pictures of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal Prime Minister, a man who whilst openly and personally supporting the principle of the franchise for women refused adamantly to take the political risk of committing his Government to bringing in the necessary legislation. Sally fidgeted a little beside her. Hannah glanced at her and the other girl flashed a quick and mischievous smile, the warmth of conspiracy in her eyes. Hannah found herself smiling back. The hall was almost full now. Self-important-looking stewards with large yellow rosettes in their lapels were ushering people to the few empty seats. The buzz of talk died, and a hush fell as the platform party filed on to the stage.
Hannah heard nothing of the introductory speech. She sat very still, trying to control the oddly irregular beating of a heart that rarely behaved in any way but calmly. She focused her eyes upon a half-empty jug of water upon the table and concentrated fiercely on marshalling her nerves and her dignity. Her hands were very cold but perfectly steady upon her lap. She saw Sydney Buxton rise, floridly prosperous-looking and completely at his ease, heard his thanks to the constituency for inviting him, for organizing the meeting so splendidly, for supporting it so well. For half an hour, then, he spoke eloquently and well, answering questions as they arose from the hall, talking of the Liberal Government’s record as a power for radical change, of its honest desire to see the working man’s lot improved –
Hannah stood.
‘Will this Liberal Government give votes to women?’
Her voice was very clear and very steady in the quiet.
The speaker looked at her, tight-lipped for the briefest of moments then, ignoring her completely, took up his theme again. ‘We plan the introduction of a national insurance scheme that—’
‘Mr Buxton, will this Liberal Government give votes to women?’
‘Sit down!’
‘Be quiet!’
‘Shut yer bloody silly mouth, woman!’
‘Let the lady speak—’
The sudden pandemonium of shouts drowned the speaker’s words as, his face determinedly turned from Hannah, with ferocious determination he attempted to plough through the interruptions. From the corner of her eye Hannah saw a large man with a rosette in his lapel hurrying from the back of the hall. Another had moved from the side door to the end of the aisle.
‘I ask again. Will the Liberal Government give women the vote?’
Someone behind her caught the jacket of her suit, pulling at it, trying to force her to sit down. Beside her Sally turned, umbrella at the ready, and the tugging stopped abruptly.
‘Throw ’er out!’
‘Shut ’er up!’
‘Shut up yerself! Why shouldn’t she ask a question, same as everyone else?’
There was confusion now on the platform. The organizer was on his feet, Buxton held his hands, palms out, trying to calm the rising crescendo of noise, of shout and countershout, of fierce argument from row to row. ‘Ladies and gentlemen—’
‘Answer the question!’ someone shouted from the back of the hall.
‘Votes for women!’ Sally was on her feet, umbrella brandished like a banner in the air. ‘Votes for women!’
‘Throw them out!’
‘Let them be! Answer the question!’
In the pandemonium Hannah stood her ground, head thrown back, her eyes fixed on her target who, she noticed, face blotched with anger, looked anywhere but at her. ‘Will this Liberal Government give women the vote?’ Her voice and the reiterated question were all but lost in the hubbub. Sydney Buxton with a gesture of irritation sat down. The Party Organizer, on his feet, waved his arms angrily. ‘Order! Order!’
‘Votes for women!’ Sally’s hoarse and cheerful voice rose gleefully above the din. ‘Votes for women!’
A burly steward was fighting his way along the row towards them. Ralph with a mildly apologetic smile and a shaken head blocked his passage. Other stewards were converging on them.
‘Votes for women!’ Sally shouted again grinning blithely, the light of battle in her eyes.
‘Get out of my way!’ The big steward pushed Ralph hard and unceremoniously in the chest, almost tipping the slighter man over into the row behind. The chairs, linked together like a metal chain tilted and then swung, catching Sally behind the knees almost knocking her from her feet. With the agility of a cat she regained her balance and jumped on to the chair. ‘Votes for women!’
‘Sling ’em out!’
‘Let ’em be!’
‘Shut yer mouth, yer stupid female!’
‘Good beltin’s what you need!’
The steward had doubled Ralph up with an elbow harshly and effectively in the midriff and was reaching for Hannah. An elderly woman in the row behind clipped him smartly over the head with her umbrella. Sally grinned. ‘That’s the ticket!’ In the brief respite Hannah opened her mouth once more. ‘Will this Liberal Gov—’ A rough hand was clamped over her mouth and she was lifted bodily over Ralph’s gasping form and dragged to the end of the row. She made no attempt to resist – struggling, she knew could simply encourage more violence.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ Sally launched herself after them, the shattered umbrella wielded two-handed. The surprised steward’s grip on Hannah slackened. She struggled free. Other hands reached for her as stewards from all over the hall converged. Sally swung her umbrella. There was laughter as one of the stewards yelped and clutched his ear.
‘Votes for women! Votes for women!’ Sally started the chant. Hannah’s was not the only voice in the hall to take it up. ‘Votes for women! Votes for women!’
The heavy hand closed upon Hannah’s mouth again, rough and hard, painfully crushing her lips against her teeth, suffocating. It reeked revoltingly of tobacco. Tasted of it. A steward had taken Sally from behind, an arm like an iron band about her narrow waist, lifting her with ease a foot or so from the floor.
‘Shame!’
‘Leave them be!’
‘Throw them out!’
The hall was bedlam.
‘Votes for wom—!’ Sally’s strong, hoarse voice was cut off too by a brutally rough hand. Kicking and scratching she was being dragged towards the back of the hall. The hand slipped. Blood streaked her chin. ‘Votes for women!’
The hand that covered Hannah’s mouth covered her nose too. Panic stricken she threw her head back, desperately trying to breathe. Her captor grunted, grabbed her arm, twisting it viciously behind her back. Both the crack of bone and her sharp shriek of pain were lost in the general uproar. Sally was fighting every inch of the way. Her hair was down, her blouse torn, an ugly bruise stained her cheekbone and one eye was all but shut. Blood from her broken lip ran down her chin.
‘Shame!’ a man’s voice shouted. ‘Give ’em a chance to speak!’
‘Votes for women!’ Sally shrieked, the power of her voice almost gone.
‘Votes for monkeys!’ someone else shouted.
‘Votes for cats! Votes for dogs! Votes for donkeys!’
Hannah’s shoulder was a ball of fiery pain. She could not breathe. She twisted, burying her teeth in a horny finger. Her captor swore, released her mouth, twisted his hand instead into her thick, loosened hair dragging her head savagely back. Tears of pain filled her eyes. Ralph was nowhere to be seen.
‘The coppers,’ someone said. ‘’Ere come the coppers. They’ll take care of the little bleeders!’
They were dragged to the back of the hall and out on to the steps beyond the doors. With huge and entirely unnecessary force the steward who held Hannah thrust her forward, all but throwing her down the flight of steps and into the arms of an obviously bemused young policeman. A moment later the bundle of flailing arms and legs that was Sally Smith followed, if anything even more forcibly, it having taken three men to subdue her, two of whom would certainly bear the scars home to their wives. Sally landed on hands and knees, her hair wild about her shoulders. The stewards who had manhandled her from the hall stood above her, dusting their hands and grinning. She sat back on her heels, almost on the enormous shining boot of a portly, fatherly looking moustachioed policeman, lifted her head to look at them. And in tones as pleasant and clear as a bell in the silence that had fallen she told them in a few most picturesque and imaginative phrases garnered directly from her early life exactly what she thought of them, their mothers, their brothers and their sisters, and what they could do with themselves now that they had finished defending their masters from two frail women.
Hannah thought she had never seen anyone look so utterly thunderstruck. The pain in her shoulder notwithstanding she found herself spluttering with a laughter that was dangerously close to hysteria. She bit her lip, still giggling.
The portly policeman bent down and helped Sally to her feet. Sally rose with ridiculous grace, thanked him politely and demurely, a wicked sparkle in her one good eye. The younger of the two policemen grinned at her, obviously much entertained. ‘Well, ladies,’ he said cheerfully, ‘any chance that if we pat you on the head and send you home you’ll go, like good little girls?’
Sally and Hannah exchanged glances. ‘None,’ they said in unison.
He nodded equably. ‘That’s what I thought. In that case I’m very much afraid that you’ll have to come along with us—’
‘Hannah!’ It was Ralph, at the top of the steps, bruised and dishevelled, his glasses gone, eyes squinting myopically in the gathering dusk.
Hannah, her hand still clutching her shoulder, smiled at her policeman. ‘Would you give me a moment?’
‘Of course.’
She mounted the steps carefully, easing her shoulder.
‘Hannah – what’s happening?’
‘It would appear’, she said composedly, ‘that we’ve been arrested. Tell Pa, would you, and Ben? And tell Mrs Briggs we won’t be back for supper.’
Ralph blinked bemusedly. In that moment, her hair like Sally’s, wild about her face and shoulders, the colour of action and excitement in her face, the strong, blunt features alight and determined, she looked to his shortsighted eyes positively beautiful. He hesitated, took breath to tell her so.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, forestalling him. ‘It’s only my shoulder, nothing too desperate. Don’t worry. It’ll only be for a week or two. We’ll be home plaguing you all again in no time.’