A Mother's Love (28 page)

He was able to afford it a few months later, after reporting on another London meeting in Queen’s Hall in support of the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill, held in March. It was a very sedate, orderly meeting, attended by Members of Parliament in evening dress and their ladies in fine gowns, all behaving with decorum. Thanks to its coverage of the meeting, the next issue of the
Freewoman
sold enough copies to warrant a second print run, to Matthew’s amazement and joy.

Since then he hadn’t looked back. The women’s suffrage movement had come out of its chilly isolation in northern England and invaded London with a vengeance. Matthew was made. In May he found himself covering a gathering of five hundred women at the House of Commons to hear the results of the second reading of the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill. He was on hand to witness their frustration and then indignation as the time was whittled away on other things, and the bill talked out, hardly taken seriously.

His new photographer, Victor Long, got splendid coverage of the event, with stark pictures of indignation, outrage and anger, as police began moving women from the Strangers’ Entrance; and then moved them on again as they tried to hold their meeting outside the House of Lords.

Matthew had a field day interviewing many of the women after the police finally allowed them to hold their meeting in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. He filled the
Freewoman
that month with accounts of their fury at the failure of the bill; at being laughed at in the Lobby by many Members of Parliament; at being hustled along in a most unladylike manner by the police. In a week, the
Freewoman
’s May issue had been sold out, and in the weeks following, the growing stack of subscriptions on his desk almost toppled over.

By summer Leonard Hallet was being sent up to Manchester to cover the meetings there. Matthew had no wish to set foot in that city ever again, and was content to leave it all in Leonard’s capable hands. He now had a telephone installed, enabling Leonard to telephone news within minutes of anything special occurring. For Matthew it was the most marvellous gadget ever invented, even though it was costly.

In this way he got the news almost at the same time as the
Manchester Guardian
of Christabel Pankhurst and her close acquaintance Miss Annie Kenney being ejected from the Free Trade Hall amid scuffles in which Christabel twice struck a police inspector. And when Leonard secured a personal interview with Miss Kenny herself on how she was manhandled and flung out of the Free Trade Hall like a criminal, the journal sold like hot cakes.

Able to report so quickly on the two heroines being charged with disorderly behaviour and obstruction in October, their refusal to pay their fines resulting in three days’ imprisonment instead, Matthew began to wonder if he shouldn’t now think of enlarging his premises to cope with an ever-expanding circulation.

There was no looking back now. The imprisonment of the two women brought a crowd of two thousand to Stevenson Square on the evening of their release from Strangeways. It was Boggart Hole Clough all over again, although this time there would be no Constance Milne-Pitford. Matthew thought of her as he took down Leonard’s report; wondered briefly where she was now and what she was doing. No doubt she had long since got over her zeal for women’s enfranchisement and was now a wife, perhaps with a couple of children. Then he forgot her as he scribbled madly, trying to keep up with the torrent of news coming over the wire.

Leonard returned to London, and the following month they were able to cover the procession of four thousand wives of the unemployed of London’s East End, marching from West Ham to Whitehall with a band blaring and hundreds of placards and banners demanding work for their menfolk and food for their children.

Just this week – after the December issue of the journal had gone out, unfortunately – there had been an uproar at the Albert Hall, again with a great deal of heckling from women sent there for that purpose amid more banners, and again ending with their being thrown out.

The general election in the New Year brought a Liberal government that flatly opposed giving women the vote. Indignant letters from outraged women flooded in, causing the circulation of the
Freewoman
to grow by leaps and bounds. In January Matthew went to his bank and secured a sizeable loan on the strength of it, to acquire a plot of land at the rear of his premises, a new modern linotype machine, and more staff to operate it and cope with the seemingly inexorable influx of mail and reportage.

Puffed up with success, he watched the print room grow brick by brick. Every now and again, though, as he watched the courses being laid, the puffed-up feeling would spring a leak. Was he overstepping himself? What if this interest in the Women’s Social and Political Union, the WSPU, was a mere flash in the pan? If it collapsed, so would his journal. At such times Matthew found sleep impossible, tossing and turning for one half of the night, the other half fraught with dreams from which he would awake in a cold sweat of misgiving.

Spring and summer, however, saw the WSPU, bless it, proving an indefatigable force. There were more marches, and halls were filled to overflowing. The Union was now well established in London, attracting women rich and poor, eager to be heard, to have a voice, to have a vote. Women who were prepared to stand in the cold rain for their turn besieged the House of Commons and lobbied the MPs. New recruits flocked to join the London branch of the Union. Photographs of banners with ‘Votes for Women’; of women storming ten Downing Street; of Miss Kenney leaping on to the Prime Minister’s car and refusing to get down, turned up on front pages in all the papers, including the
Freewoman.

Matthew was no fool. He knew well enough that his success was based solely on women
not
getting the vote; that so long as the new Liberal government refused to recognise them as potential voters, he would have material for his journal; that the day women
were
given the vote, would be the day the
Freewoman
would have to look to its laurels. But at the moment it looked as though that prospect was a good many years away yet.

On the strength of that premise, Matthew went completely mad and bought a motorcar with a chauffeur in the hopes that Harriet might be persuaded to venture out with him on those occasions she felt well enough in herself to do so. He found her a personal maid, a quiet-natured seventeen-year-old named Lilly, so she would have nothing to distress her; for she was all too easily distressed these days. All this was extra expense, of course, but with the journal’s continuing success, he could afford it, and Harriet was worth it. They might not share the same bed any more, nor even the same room, but he loved her dearly. Poor darling, life could have been kinder to her.

From her window in Rutland Road, Annie saw Matthew draw up. Beside him Harriet sat, her head bent, her face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat held on by a veil. The corners of Annie’s lips curled downward. She’d done well for herself, had Harriet, with her motorcar and fine clothes. It was a pity she did not measure up to her improving status. Everyone knew she liked her sip of brandy more than could be called medicinal. And she hardly ever came visiting these days. Annie wondered how Matthew stood for it.

She laid down her crocheting as Matthew leapt from the vehicle, chequered dust-coat flapping in a stiff September breeze. His face bore a strained look, she noticed, as he ran up the tiled path. His urgent rap on the knocker brought her to her feet, alarmed now.

‘I’ll get it, Lizzy!’ Her housemaid paused on her way to answer, retracing her steps to the parlour she had been cleaning.

Matthew was in the hall almost as soon as Annie had opened the door. ‘Annie – it’s your father. He’s been taken ill. Your mother telephoned my office. I came round straight away.’

Jack Wilson had been ailing for some time with heart trouble. His doctor had warned him against overworking, and since then he’d left much of his joinery business in his sons’ hands. There had been a scare the year before, but the family, told later, had found him much better, sitting up in bed. This time, Matthew’s appearance on her doorstep talking of telephone messages had Annie immediately in a fluster of apprehension.

‘Is it his heart?’

‘Your mother asks that you come straight away. I have the motor – we can pick up Clara on the way.’

Annie was already dragging her hat and coat from the hallstand, her voice echoing through the house for her housemaid.

‘Lizzy!’ The girl appeared, duster in hand, eyes wide in query. ‘I want you to look after the children when they come home from school. Give them their food. Make sure they go to bed on time if I’m not back. When Mr Emmerson comes in, tell him where I am.’

‘Where’s that, Mrs Emmerson?’

‘My mother’s, of course.’ Her reply was impatient. Hardly had Matthew closed the street door than she was beside the motor, even more alarmed by the sight of her sister’s reddened eyes.

‘What’s happened, Harriet? How bad is it?’

‘I don’t really know.’ Harriet’s voice was feeble with tears. ‘I only know Matthew came home and told me we’ve got to get round there as soon as we can. It’s Dad’s heart. They’ve called the doctor, but we don’t know any more than that.’

‘That’s right,’ Matthew told Annie as he helped her into the rear seat and laid a rug over her knees. ‘We don’t know any more than that, so let’s not get too upset too soon.’

Clara’s reactions were almost identical to her sister’s, grabbing her outdoor clothes, instructing her maid on the needs of children and husband, running from the house in Ruth Road in a fluster of urgency.

Both sisters huddled in the rear seat, holding on to over-large hats not all that securely pinned in their hurry. In the front seat beside Matthew, Harriet was silently giving way to fresh tears.

‘Don’t begin weeping all over again,’ he hissed at her. It never took much to make her cry, and once she’d begun, she could continue in bouts for any length of time. Matthew could feel his patience dissolving. It could dissolve all too easily these days where she was concerned. ‘We don’t yet know how serious it is. It may be nothing.’

‘How can it be?’ She fought her emotions with a tremendous effort. ‘When Mum has to get to the post office to
telephone
you, how can it be?’

‘People do use the telephone system these days – it’s easier.’

‘And quicker,’ she finished off for him. ‘If it wasn’t serious she wouldn’t have telephoned. She’d have sent someone round – like last time.’

‘No point worrying until we get there,’ he ordered brusquely. He was already turning into Mare Street, passing the premises of his journal. In two minutes they would be in Approach Road.

Sara didn’t feel at all like eating. She sat silent at the dining table, toying with her food while Jamie wolfed his down as though he might never see another meal. How he could eat so much and never put on an ounce of fat or his pasty face look any healthier, beat her.

Jamie was nine now. He had celebrated his birthday the previous week, on the seventeenth of September, with a small party for some of his school friends, during which he’d eaten so much that he was sick afterwards. In a panic, his mother had sent for Dr Horder. Whatever Dr Horder thought about being called out for practically nothing, he didn’t bat an eyelid, just patted her on the shoulder in a reassuring manner and went away to put in his bill. To see Mother with Jamie sometimes, people would think he was her only child. Perhaps in a way he was. Sara felt the old pang of resentment at the thought.

‘Don’t you care that Grandad’s ill?’ she said as he shovelled another forkful of minced beef and potato into his mouth.

He looked up at her, his eyes totally free of concern. He had his mother’s eyes, though his were blue, and where hers suited her vibrant colouring perfectly, his seemed to stare out from such a pale complexion as though there was in fact no face around them at all.

‘Well?’ Sara demanded.

Jamie shrugged. ‘We’re left here. There’s nothing we can do about him, is there?’

‘You could at least stop eating like a little pig.’

‘If I don’t eat, it won’t make him any better.’

Sara threw her knife and fork down beside her uneaten food. ‘You’re so spoiled, you are. I wonder you’re not crying after Mother, being left alone.’

He pulled a face. ‘I think I’m grown-up enough not to do that. It’s only that you’re jealous because she thinks more of me than she does of you. It’s me she pets, not you.’

‘I don’t need anyone to pet me,’ Sara said coldly.

‘He does.’

‘Who?’

‘Father. He pets you all the time. He never pets me.’

‘You’re a boy.’

‘What difference does that make?’

Sara said nothing. The truth of that difference was that while she felt resentment of the favouritism bestowed on Jamie from the mother whose love she had always wanted, he suffered the selfsame resentment at Matthew’s feelings towards her. The irony of it was that while Jamie could lap up the love their mother gave him, Sara felt alienated by love from the man she now knew as her stepfather. It was so unfair.

Henry Craig relaxed his bulk back into the brown leather armchair and toyed with his brandy and soda in the hush of the club reading room.

‘And what about your accountant? D’you consider him any good?’

Matthew regarded his father with a degree of affection. Since Henry had taken to coming up to London quite often these days, they would meet in the Britannic Club in Old Broad Street, where Matthew was a member, and spend a few hours chatting over a drink. They had grown closer these past few years despite his father’s continuing reluctance to regard his son’s marriage as a good match. They would usually have dinner, Matthew arranging for him to stay there overnight, drawing a line at inviting him back to the house. He no longer feared that his father would turn the offer down, but Harriet was not prepared – neatly, he evaded the true reason: her growing need for that sip of brandy to fortify herself – to meet guests. Much less his father.