A Woman's Place (22 page)

She wished Eveline were here today to listen to her grumbles. Eveline would have so enjoyed this great spectacle with its seven hundred banners and forty bands, the green, white and purple sashes of the WSPU blending with the green, white and gold of the Women’s Freedom League and all the other different shades and colours.

This procession had been long awaited. Postponed to this Saturday the eighteenth of June due to the King’s death, it was the first large-scale public procession for two years, made possible by news of the introduction of the Conciliation Bill, which was still in progress and looking hopeful. So it was with jubilation and hope that the two-mile-long procession marched.

There were women around her whom she knew yet without Eveline she felt oddly lonely. But positioned well behind the huge hunger strikers’ banner, she knew that Eveline would have been walking not with her but with those six hundred other prison veterans, wearing her prisoner’s brooch, the white, broad arrow brooch glittering bravely on her chest. She felt a stab of envy that Eveline was one of them and she was not. No use blaming her father. She should have defied him that day and demanded the fine he’d paid be returned, or behaved so badly as to have been had up for contempt.

Connie gazed stolidly at the enormous banner just ahead of her bearing the embroidered signatures of eighty women heralded as having ‘faced death without flinching’ and another emblazoned with the words ‘From Prison to Citizenship’.

In the golden light of a fine June evening, a fife band led the prisoners’ pageant, its band mistress swinging her silver-mounted staff as competently as any guardsman, and behind that, the prisoners’ tableau – two white horses with gold and purple trappings and laurel wreaths drawing a cart with a group of young women in white and a single suffragette in prison apparel. It took the whole of Connie’s resolve to push away the knowledge that if she hadn’t just had had her baby, Eveline would be there enjoying pride of place among that group.

Similar pageants and tableaux were positioned at intervals along the entire length of this visual expression of women’s strength: nurses in their uniforms; bicyclists, their machines decorated with flowers; athletes and sportswomen in their sportswear. There were artists with their palettes and brushes hung with flowers and ribbons; university graduates; actresses, the best dressed of all with their rose pink and pale green banner and staves tied with foliage and pink roses. There was the Writers Suffrage League and the Freedom League, the Church League led by a group of clergymen, the younger suffragettes, the Fabians, the Ethical Societies and scores of others. The Men’s League, formed in 1907 in support of women’s suffrage, brought the biggest surprise to the watching crowds. One contingent was made up of hundreds of sweated labourers who toiled in factories and stuffy workrooms, all wearing or carrying the products of their trade. There were those from far places, such as the Irish Women’s Franchise League who, so Connie heard, had travelled all night to be here, and others from as far away as Canada, Australia and America.

Bringing up the rear was a veritable stream of motor cars brightly decked out with flowers. Coachmen wearing rosettes had picked out the wheels and shafts of their coaches with white roses, the harnesses with purple, green and white.

It was all so well planned. Nothing as splendid had been seen since the 1908 Hyde Park rally and after the solemn funeral of King Edward a few weeks back it was a sight to stir the hearts of those crowds lining the route, which was exactly what it was meant to do, the redoubtable Mrs Drummond astride a huge charger having raised her whip on the dot of six thirty this evening to begin the procession. Her slow and determined advance along Northumberland Avenue had obliged the mounted policemen to clear the way for her as the forty bands struck up all at once.

To Connie’s mind, walking in its midst, it was like a festival, every women in summer dress with her bright sash, banners held high, bands playing, traffic forced to pull to one side for them to pass, yet all she could think of was how she’d have felt with Eveline walking in honour in the prisoners’ pageant while she remained just one of these fifteen thousand.

Eveline had had her baby on the twenty-third of May, barely four weeks ago. She had named her Helena.

‘I want to be there,’ she had said. ‘A month will have gone by and I’m sure I’ll be all right by then.’ But even Albert, an easy-going sort, had been against her going off while nursing a month-old baby. Walking all the way from Northumberland Avenue to the Albert Hall and standing with the WSPU prisoners as a guard of honour, she would never have lasted.

She had popped in to see Eveline before leaving and found her fretful and sulky. ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ Connie soothed, which seemed to make her even more sullen. But she would go and see her after this was all over, try to cheer her up though it might be best to play down the rousing din and wonderful spectacle if she could contain herself to do so.

Poor Eveline. It was hard not to see her as poor Eveline and as envy melted she realised how much she had to be thankful for.

Albert came home with a look of someone who’d won a small fortune.

‘I didn’t say nothing before,’ he said, taking off his cap and his coat to hang them on the peg behind the living-room door, ‘but a few weeks ago I asked for a rise, said I had a kiddy to support now. I never really thought I’d get it, but guess what? I’ve been given two bob more.’

Eveline stared at him. Two shillings, to some a drop in the ocean, to her meant a bit of extra food on the table, or a dress for Helena.

‘We can put in for a transfer to a nicer letting,’ he was saying. ‘Means paying a bit more rent but Helena will soon need her own room ter sleep in.’

Eveline smiled. ‘Best not be too hasty.’ She still couldn’t trust luck.

It was hard to believe how life had changed; last autumn she had felt out of her mind with worry, abandoned, disgraced. Now she had a home of her own, a husband, her baby with Albert’s name, and soon a bit more cash.

One thing was lacking. She missed the suffragette meetings. But it wasn’t possible while still nursing. At regular times her breasts would grow hard, milk seeping from her nipples, and as if by instinct Helena would begin to whimper, then bawl if she wasn’t given her feed there and then. How could any mother go off on her own pursuits when so tied down?

Even if she could have left Helena with someone, she couldn’t have been away for too long before her breasts began to harden and leak uncomfortably. It would be months before Helena was weaned. She had heard somewhere that it was possible to dry the milk up sooner but she had no idea how. There was no question of asking Mum. She’d be appalled and refuse to talk about it, But Gran might know. She knew most things.

A couple of afternoons a week Eveline would pop across to spend an hour or two with Gran. She loved seeing the baby whereas Mum was always busy down in the shop and didn’t seem all that interested in Helena, maybe because of the circumstances of the child’s birth. Despite Helena being a pretty baby she didn’t seem to touch Mum’s heart at all.

This afternoon, after days stuck indoors with Helena demanding to be fed every two or three hours so that Eveline was hardly able to go shopping before having to rush back with her to feed her again, she decided in desperation that it was time to ask Gran’s advice.

She was certain that even if she disapproved she’d at least be kind about it and understanding. So she was a bit taken aback when Gran lifted her gaze from smiling down at her six-week-old-great-grandchild she was cuddling on her lap to regard her granddaughter with a critical eye.

‘Why would yer want to dry it up this soon?’ she enquired.

‘I need to attend suffragette meetings again. But like this I can’t.’

‘Need?’ The question had a reproving ring to it. Eveline wilted.

‘I feel I ought to,’ she modified.

‘I see.’ Gran looked down at Helena and clucked her tongue at her. ‘Have you spoken to your ’usband about it?’ she asked, not looking up,

‘No, not yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he might not be too happy about it.’

Gran nodded, her eyes still on the baby. ‘If yer think he might not be too ’appy about it, then why’ve you come to me?’

Eveline knew she was losing. Her voice grew high and urgent. ‘That’s exactly why we’re fighting, to have the same rights as men. Why should I have to ask Bert’s permission if I want to do something?’

‘Because you’re ’is wife and Helena’s his child.’

‘She’s
not
his child …’ Eveline broke off, realising what she had said. Gran hadn’t lifted her gaze once from little Helena’s face surrounded by its knitted white shawl, the baby’s round, deep blue eyes staring up at her with wide curiosity.

Silenced for a moment, Eveline fought to gloss over what she had just said. ‘I
have
to get back to what I was doing,’ she rushed on. ‘So many things are happening and before long I’ll find myself left out.’

Her grandmother looked up, her tone cynical. ‘If that’s what you’re concerned about, don’t worry, they won’t forget you. You’re too important. You’ve been in prison for your cause. They need women like you.’

‘That’s why I must get back into it as soon as possible.’

It was as though her grandmother hadn’t heard her. ‘But if it’s just that you’re missing the excitement, you’ll ’ave to be patient a bit longer and put your mind to being a good mother.’

Eveline caught the dig. ‘Please, Gran, I am a good mother, but I’m a good suffragette too, and it’s for her future as well that I have to stand with them in this fight for our equality.’ It sounded as if she were standing on some soapbox giving a speech. But Gran was taking it all in her stride.

Looking down again at the baby, who had begun to whimper fretfully, twisting her head instinctively towards the elderly bosom in an eagerness to suckle, Victoria inserted a little finger between the rosebud lips. Like a kitten at a teat Helena immediately fastened on to the ageing finger, starting to suck furiously.

‘She wants her feed,’ Victoria said.

‘She’s always wanting her feed,’ Eveline said petulantly. ‘I can’t keep up with her. I can’t move out of her sight!’

Gran gave her a sharp glance. ‘Don’t you like being a mother?’

‘Of course I do. She’s mine. But I can’t be twenty-four hours a day, waiting for her to cry to be fed. I just need to—’

‘Trying to dry up your milk too soon could bring a lot of discomfort,’ Gran interrupted. ‘A lot more’n you imagine.’ It sounded as if she had done exactly that in the past herself. ‘It could even make you very ill. When it does start to dwindle, that’s when you can do something about it.’

‘That’s the trouble – I don’t know how.’

‘When the time comes I’ll show you.’

‘Exactly how long before the time comes?’ She hadn’t meant to be sharp and she saw her grandmother’s eyes give a little flicker. ‘We’re getting closer every day to getting the vote,’ she hurried on, trying hard to modify the urgency in her tone.

Gran’s shoulders lifted slightly in a dismissive shrug. ‘I don’t think it’s as close as all that. It ain’t going to ’appen overnight.’

‘It could.’ Eveline turned her eyes to her baby, sucking noisily at the finger. ‘We’ve been trying for so long. It’s got to happen at some time. It could come sooner than we think.’

Her grandmother’s attitude was frustrating. It was early July. The sun had come out to stay. Suffragettes in their summer dresses were holding rallies and processions, delivering speeches from carts decorated with the suffragette colours, in parks, on street corners, outside pubs and men’s clubs, all with growing confidence of the Conciliation Bill getting its second reading on the eleventh and twelfth. A second reading! Everyone was sure it would get a majority vote. It was a huge step towards women’s suffrage. And here was Gran pouring cold water on it.

‘Can you see politicians,’ she was saying, ‘what’s been against it all these years suddenly agreeing to every suffragette demand without going into endless negotiations? Meself, I don’ think so.’

Eveline had to admit to that truth about politicians but this woman’s negative approach to what was the most important thing ever irritated her.

‘I still think it’s going to be soon,’ she stubbornly contradicted.

Connie had told her about Mrs Pankhurst’s speech inside the Albert Hall on the eighteenth of June, saying that the only word in everyone’s thoughts was victory and if the government sought to thwart or postpone that victory, may God help them in the times that were coming. After that, Connie had said how Lord Lytton had spoken of the work the Conciliation Committee was doing, with political developments bringing them closer to their long-awaited triumph. With over seventy-three thousand pounds being raised in donations, Connie had made a great deal of the huge cheers that had met the announcement.

Eveline had been so envious and so upset at not being there when she told of how the procession had turned dull streets into a ribbon of festivity. And when Connie had described the scene inside the Albert Hall, the packed audience swaying like coloured grass before a breeze as Mrs Pankhurst came to the stage, a small, lone, elegant and dignified figure in black, to give her address, Eveline could have cried for having missed it all.

‘Just don’t go getting your ’opes up too much about politicians,’ Gran concluded. ‘They change their minds like the weather. Expecting them to do anything quick is like asking for miracles to ’appen.’

Eveline remained silent as Gran went on: ‘Anyway, even if you wasn’t nursing, someone’ll ’ave to give eye to Helena when you’re out. Your mum won’t, and Albert can’t stay at ’ome and lose money to look after her.’

‘Some of the organisers,’ Eveline said, ‘say husbands should give a hand in the housework and bringing up the children so we can attend.’

Gran pulled a face, the creases wrinkling alarmingly, showing her age. ‘Codswallop! Don’t go asking your Bert to do any such thing. It’s one thing to tell others what they must do, it’s another to do it themselves – unless they’ve got staff and can afford a nursemaid.’