Crooked Pieces (11 page)

They giggled some more at this, which I thought pretty foolish for grown women, then Mrs Pethick Lawrence came in with a grand piece of news. The Prime Minister had agreed to receive a deputation in the ‘near future’, so everyone cheered and declared victory was just around the corner.

Later Miss Lake asked me if I was dreaming about my bobby. (I was just resting my eyes a little from the typewriter and happened to be gazing out of the window.) I said, sharp as I dared, ‘That I’m not, miss. If you asked me I could scarce describe him.’

She nodded. ‘I thought his moustache a little droopy.’

‘He had none.’

Then Miss Miller remarked she thought him too short for a constable. I told her he was a clear head and a half above the sergeant guarding the Prime Minister. ‘Well, maybe, but he had red hair and I never like that.’

I had to tell her how very fair he was, with not a carroty strand to his head.

‘And you’ve quite forgotten his eyes, I daresay?’ asked Miss Lake.

I said they were greeny brown, as far as I recalled.

‘Tall, fair, clean-shaven with greeny brown eyes. Yes, I can see you’ve forgotten all about him.’

I was just glad they had not heard him call me pretty, or I think I should have been teased till my dying day.

The office is a very busy place. Being in a room at their home, Mrs Pethick Lawrence is forever popping in and out with fresh instructions and ideas for the Cause, as it is known.

Although there are just three of us working there, Miss Kerr, Miss Lake and myself, there are always a half dozen or so ladies milling around, collecting posters and leaflets or bringing news of what is happening in the Parliament and such, and all the time wanting to know what to do next. If you cannot tell them on the instant they take it upon themselves to find a task and generally this causes more muddle than if they just sat in a corner and chatted, or better still, went away!

Poor Miss Kerr was close to tears the other day when she found one of the helpers had taken all her files and rearranged them in date order, when she had come in over the weekend specially to sort them by letters.

Another of the ladies decided we would work much better for the accompaniment of music, and sat a whole afternoon playing on a black wooden pipe till we all felt like throwing her and it out of the window, her only knowing one tune and getting that wrong more often than right.

Because they mean so well it is difficult for anyone, even
Miss Sylvia, to say anything. In fact I think she finds it hardest of all for she has such a gentle nature and does not like to see people offended or hurt in any way, but this often leads to misunderstandings. It would not matter so much if we were left to ourselves to sort it out, but we are always in fear that Mrs Pankhurst, or worse, Miss Christabel, will make a flying visit and we shall not be able to lay our hands on what they require.

This would be worse than dreadful for I know I long for their good opinion above all others and I am sure the others do too. Miss Lake goes quite quivery when Miss Christabel is by and so do most of the helper ladies. One good word from her and they are glowing like buttered muffins, one frown and they are low as mud. Fortunately Mrs Pethick Lawrence always comes to our aid, knowing just where to find lost files and who was meant to do what, and what they did instead, and how we can best undo it. Sometimes when the muddle is too terrible even for her, she flops down in a chair, clasps her head and murmurs, ‘Give me a moment, ladies. Let me take this in.’ Then comes up with the most brilliant suggestion that we all wish we had thought of first, and truly I have heard some repeat them as though they had!

My duties are various. Every morning I spend thirty minutes at the typewriter learning how it is done. At first I thought I should never work it for the letters are higgledy-piggled all over the place and not in any order to make sense. I asked if it was a German one, for we all know they are not to be trusted and might easily make the letters foreign to cause mischief. Miss Kerr laughed mightily and said she had not thought of that. Miss Lake made a tutting sound and one of the ladies rolled her eyes upwards and glanced at her friend.
She did not say anything but I could see she thought me very stupid. I hate it when they look like that. Why can they not say to me, ‘Maggie, that is mad,’ as they do to each other? ‘Enid, you are quite potty.’ ‘Alice, where did you leave your brains this morning?’ But to me, nothing. Eyes rolling upwards. How many of them know nine psalms, I wonder, and have a bobby wanting to learn them from them?

One day when I was waiting for Miss Sylvia to bring me a letter for typing one of the helpers, a very pretty girl with hair the colour of chestnuts and pale speckly skin, sat down on the edge of my desk. ‘Does your father not mind you working here?’ she asked.

I said, no, he was very pleased for me to have come by such a position. She seemed most amazed. ‘Mine doesn’t know anything about it. He’d go dippy if he did. Mama knows but she says I must never breathe a word of it at home. You are lucky, having the pater on your side.’

I said I thought so too, not having the faintest notion what she meant. Just then Miss Sylvia came in with her letter so I was able to get on with my work. I heard the young lady say to her, ‘Why does Maggie talk like that, Sylvia?’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, I don’t know. As though she was common?’

I have rarely seen Miss Sylvia angry. I’m not sure that she was angry then, but her face seemed almost to freeze for a second, then she said, as calmly and kindly as ever, ‘Maggie Robins is the least common person I have ever met, Marion. Now, have you got enough pamphlets or shall I try and rake out a few more for you?’ I felt like crying, in gratitude to her, but mainly for shame of myself.

Maybe I should have stayed where I was with the Roes. Ladies will smile at you while you are serving them tea, but lift yourself to be like them and they will very quickly put you in your place. I wonder what ‘equal’ really means.

I am also in charge of the post so each day I spend a good hour putting leaflets into envelopes and stamping and addressing them – to such places as you would never believe: Homesby Manor, Clarendon House, Chesterfield Hall. I am surprised there is not one to be sent to Buckingham Palace. None to Turnpike Lane, Stepney, but who there could read it, now I’m away?

Incoming letters I file from A to Z in a great wooden box which Miss Kerr has fitted a lock to! At noon I go to the post office and when I return there is usually a plate of sandwiches and cups of tea laid ready for everyone. This is one task the ladies are very good at for many of them are from rich families and bring all sorts of delicious treats for us to try. I think it is a competition between them, for though they always swear that whoever has made the food that day has exceeded all others, it does not stop them popping up with something even more fancy when it is their turn. One lady, a Miss Haythorne, brought some horrid little black pellets which she spread on slices of toast. The others ‘ooh’ed and ‘aah’ed mightily, and seemed to think it the finest food on earth, but to me it tasted like salty jelly so when no one was looking, I spat it down the sink and had to make do with dry toast for there was nothing else that day.

In the afternoon we write more envelopes and Miss Kerr and Miss Lake take it in turns to type out replies and requests
for money, which Mrs Pethick Lawrence usually signs as she is very well liked and can get people to open their purses.

At four o’clock everyone gathers to say what has been done and what needs doing next – planning meetings, letters to the press and the Prime Minister, who shall make the next speech… Miss Annie is champion at this, although she herself swears she is nothing to Miss Christabel who could ‘turn water into wine’. I have yet to hear her, but it would not surprise me, for she is so altogether brilliant with the shiniest hair I ever saw. Except for Frank’s and he, too, can persuade a soul to anything with just one smile.

Mrs Beckett said beauty was a curse, sent by the devil to drag you from the paths of righteousness. Well, she had no cause to fear on that account for more warts I never saw on a chin and some of them joined together. I should so like to be beautiful. I know it is a vanity, but it would not be altogether bad, for fine looks are a powerful weapon, it seems to me. Truly, people will follow a handsome person when they turn up their noses at a plain one, though I think they would follow Miss Christabel if she came tinkling a bell, shouting, ‘Leper’. Oh, to be like her! To be one of the handsome people. To lead. I would so love to lead.

I asked Miss Sylvia why her sister did not speak at all our meetings. ‘She’d be hoarse within a week. Besides, Mother is most particular we fit the right speaker to the right occasion.’

‘Surely our message is the same, whoever brings it? “Women should have the same rights as men”.’

‘Yes, but there are many ways of coming by it. Think, Maggie, what good would it do to send Mrs Despard, say, whom we both know sounds like the Queen of England,
amongst poor starving women in the East End, or Miss Annie to talk to the aristocracy? Firstly, they would not understand a word and secondly they would undoubtedly object to being lectured by someone with no experience of their problems.’

‘Except the nobs don’t have problems, miss, do they?’

‘Well, not so many, certainly, but they think they do, so it’s the same thing.’

I could not help myself from laughing. Miss Sylvia nodded. ‘I know what you are thinking, Maggie and, of course, you are right. Deciding which hat to wear to the rally is hardly in the same class as wondering where your next meal is coming from. But some of our girls have awful family problems. You heard yourself how Marion dare not tell her father of her involvement. It is like that for a lot of our supporters. Husbands and wives torn apart, brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters… It may seem nothing to you, but to them it is everything, so try to be a little patient with them when they make silly comments or unfortunate remarks. Just think, it is they who are ignorant, not you.’

‘I shall try, miss.’

Miss Sylvia laughed. ‘Well, don’t try too hard for some of them could do with a dressing down, believe me. Would you like to see some pictures I’ve had framed? I’d love to know what you think of them.’

I thought they were sad and dreadful and beautiful and brave. Miss Sylvia had been away to the north of England and spent weeks going round all the workplaces up there, just painting and sketching the women as they laboured. Pit women dragging great carts of coal along tunnels scarce high enough to house a donkey. Weavers, eyes swollen like red pus
balloons, noses shrivelled for lack of air as they sweated a ten-hour day in front of their looms. Factory workers slumped across their benches, seamstresses blinking by candlelight to sew black on black in the black, black night. Women yellow from lead poisoning as they dip and dye cloth for the gentry.

I asked, ‘How could you bear to draw such ugliness, miss?’

She was silent for a while. ‘I don’t know, Maggie. I’m not that good with words. Not like Christabel or Mother. This is all I have. My way of saying it cannot go on.’

I said, ‘If you cannot think what to say, why do you not just show the people these pictures?’

She smiled.

Miss Sylvia is requested everywhere. Her paintings have moved people more than a thousand speeches, I would venture, but also they have given her the courage to speak out and tell the women what is happening to their sisters.

Sometimes she will draw shouts from the crowd, telling of their own bad fortune. She replies that that is why they must fight. Fight to save their children from such a fate. From being thrust up chimney shafts and down coal pits till their poor young spines are twisted from crawling through tunnels scarce wide enough to take a dog.

I heard Miss Christabel chastise her once. ‘Remember, it is the women we are after, Sylvia. If you lose sight of the goal you undermine the Cause.’

Miss Sylvia shook her head. ‘The women will fight for their children before they fight for themselves and if the way to do that is through the vote, then that is the path they will surely take.’

Miss Christabel looked vexed but said no more on the matter.

Every night I take home a pamphlet to study in the hope of understanding the Cause a little better. It is easy to see that the world would be much improved if everyone had enough to eat and a good warm hearth to come home to, but I find it hard to fathom how voting for some stiff grey man with a top hat and his own carriage is going to change things. Miss Sylvia is very patient with my endless questions though she must think me very dull for it always comes back to the same one. ‘Why should such people care about me?’

‘Maggie, I agree. Many of them would not, do not. But you are just one. Think if every female in the country were to rise up and demand the vote? Half the country – more even, for there are more girls born than boys. Did you know that?’

I said I did not but it would not surprise me for there are a powerful lot of ladies wandering around our office most of the time, and hardly ever a man.

‘If women refused to cook or keep house till such time as they were given the vote, think how they could influence the framing of the laws. Why should a government of men decide how taxes paid by men
and
women should be spent? Why must our money go to making guns and sending men to war, rather than building hospitals and schools? Why should not every child receive a decent education? Why are boys taught chemistry and mathematics while girls are made to sew and polish doorsteps? Is that fair? Is that what you want? Is it what you want for your children if you have any?’

‘No, but…’

‘But what?’

‘How can you make all the women agree to stop cooking?’

Miss Sylvia smiled. ‘Well, let’s hope it does not come to that, but do you not see, Maggie, the very knowledge that it is within their power to do so may give them the strength to fight for their rights. Women are only powerless if they allow themselves to be.’

I have thought about that. I understand that if there are more women than men and they all stand together surely they should be able to force the men to do their bidding, but men are bigger than women and I know that if Ma refuses Pa one thing he slaps her hard across the head and makes her nose bleed. So I think we have a long cruel battle ahead of us. I said so to Miss Annie.