Crooked Pieces (15 page)

‘It’s different. You are older. You can care for yourself.’

‘How come she cares for Alfie? He is older than I am.’

‘You know that Alfie has problems. He does what he can.’

‘“Alfie has problems”. You never thought that when you spent long hours trying to teach him to read and to do his numbers, which he still cannot fathom.’

‘I was wrong. I did not know that then.’

‘Did Frank have problems? When you took him away and went to the concert and the halls and off anywhere so that I could not be with you?’

‘That’s different. You were too young.’

‘And you were his “best girl”. Do you think I have forgotten?’

I shook my head. ‘Lucy… What…? Lucy, I have not been a very good sister to you, I know. But it is different now. I have my own life. You are the oldest now and you must take my place here.’

‘And if I will not?’

‘You must.’

‘Or what?’

‘I don’t know. I cannot be here always.’

Lucy gave a laugh, but it was hollow and uncouth. ‘No, for you may be in prison, like before.’

I felt as though my blood had drained out through the floor. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Everyone knows. They call you a heroine in the street.’

‘Does Pa know?’

‘Him, I don’t know. Ma does, and Mrs Grant.’

‘But she said nothing.’

‘Ma nevers says anything. Don’t you know that yet? Anything.’ With that, she rolled on her front and would not look at me.

I leant against the door. ‘Lucy, please listen to me. Let me explain.’

‘Explain what? That you have a fine life and fine clothes and come round here telling me to stay and be a slave here? While you can be a heroine and have your picture in the paper.’

‘What paper?’

‘Oh, did you not know? Ask Ma. She has it hid in a drawer lest Pa sees it. “Suffra…suffra…something, Released from Holloway.” And there you are, smiling and waving and driving off in a cab like a princess and the like. Frank bought it for us. He thought it a great jest so, of course, I had to pretend I thought so too or he would have pulled my hair wicked.’

‘Frank is not like that.’ For all I understood her envy, I could not hear her speak of him so meanly.

She turned on her side and looked up at me with her pale little caterpillar eyes. ‘You don’t know Frank. Not the way I do.’

I felt a sick cold stone in my belly.

I said nothing to Ma of what had passed between Lucy and me. What good would it do? Lucy is a liar and always has been. I have been beaten often enough for tales she has spun to Pa to ever trust a word she says, so why should I believe her now? Believe what? For she said nothing – only looked. And yet I know. Know in my heart that she
has
taken my place, and for her there will be no escape. So I carry this with me like a great boulder on my back. This knowledge that I cannot share and I go back to my new, my other life, and there I learn to fight injustice towards people I do not know while my own sister sinks into a pit that I have dug.

And the ladies praise me and call me valiant. Some do, anyway. Others, I know, think it wrong for a slum girl to be put in charge of money (I am given ten shillings each week to pay for stamps). I heard Miss Haythorne murmuring what a risk Mrs Pethick Lawrence took in entrusting so much to the likes of me. ‘I hope she counts the change, for that young Maggie has a new ribbon in her hair at every meeting.’

‘Why don’t you bring it up at the next one?’ asked her companion.

‘What? I can hardly raise a point of order about Maggie Robins’ fripperies.’

‘No, but you could pretend to admire them and ask her how much they cost.’

‘I suppose so.’

I wrote down a list of every ribbon I had bought since I started at Clement’s Inn. Beside it I wrote what they had cost and underneath, what I was paid. I stuck it in an envelope, printed the lady’s name in my best writing and handed it to her as she passed by my desk.

‘What’s this, Maggie?’

‘An account, miss.’

‘Oh?’

‘And if it’s not too much trouble, miss, please could you tell me how much those black rubber pellets cost that you brought for our lunch the other day?’

Miss Kerr said that Miss Christabel wanted to see me upstairs. I counted the stairs as I went up, sure it was the last time I would ever climb them. She and Miss Annie were standing by the fireplace when I entered, looking very serious.

‘Ah, Maggie,’ said Miss Christabel, ‘I’ll come straight to the point. We’ve had a complaint.’

I said nothing.

‘From Miss Haythorne. She says you insulted her… Did you?’

‘I don’t think so, miss.’

‘Oh, come on, Maggie. Either you did or you didn’t. Which is it to be?’

‘I did, miss.’

‘You
did
?’

‘How, Maggie?’ Miss Annie broke in. ‘What on earth did you say?’

‘I asked her how much she paid for the rubber pellets she fed us.’

There was a silence. Miss Christabel’s face looked as though it was halfway to cracking in two. ‘Well, that’s certainly a little uncharitable. Why, Maggie? The ladies do their very best to make a nice lunch for us.’

‘She was saying I had too many new ribbons.’

‘To you?’

‘No, not to me. A yard away from where I sat. That I was pinching from the stamp money to pay for them.’

Miss Christabel looked very stern. ‘Is this true?’

‘I don’t steal, miss.’

She snapped her fingers angrily. ‘I know that, Maggie. Is it true, that is what she suggested?’

‘To her friend. Not to me.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I wrote out what I was paid and how much I spent on ribbons and gave it to her. And then I asked her about the rubber things.’

‘Thank you, Maggie. You had better get back to your desk. I know how busy you are.’

Halfway down the stairs I was leapt on by a bear. In fact it was Miss Annie. ‘Maggie, you are wonderful,’ was all she said before she went hopping ahead of me down to the office.

We never saw Miss Haythorne again.

Miss Annie and Miss Christabel are gone up north to a
by-election
and word comes back that they are cheered to the roof wherever they go. Miss Sylvia has taken charge of the meetings. At first they were quite jolly and more about what songs to sing and who should carry the banners, but of late there has been a degree of arguing. A lot of ladies (mainly older) do not agree with parades and shouting and the like. They believe we must work by sending letters and waiting till someone feels like answering them. Mrs Despard spoke most forcibly on the subject.

‘The human race evolves to meet the challenges of its time,
but this is not a process to be hastened. It must distil into the portals of our intellect. Only then can we hope to attain parity.’

Miss Sylvia asked if anyone would like to respond. I was glad to see no one looked any wiser than I.

Often things are said I do not agree with yet I can never find the courage to speak out. One day a lady suggested we should do a lot better if only pretty women were allowed to represent us in public. There was a lot of ‘mmming’ and nodding about that. Another lady said all the speakers were pretty anyway, so where was the problem? Everyone laughed.

After Miss Sylvia asked, ‘What did you think of that suggestion, Maggie?’

‘Which, miss?’

‘About pretty speakers?’

‘I don’t know, miss.’

‘Which means you do not agree.’

‘It’s just…’ Silence. I feel her eyes upon me. ‘…if you only have pretty ladies to speak, people will not believe that they are suffering. How can someone in a silk dress with jewels and a fur cape convince a single soul her life is hard? Why do you not get women who mine the coal or tan the leather to speak for you? Women like those in your pictures?’

Miss Sylvia was silent, then she sighed. ‘Maggie, why do you not say these things at the meetings for all to hear?’

I said nothing.

‘Tell me.’

‘Because I…because I do not talk like the ladies.’

The next day Miss Annie came to find me. ‘Tomorrow we go to Huddersfield.’

‘Huddersfield? Where is that?’

‘Far away in the north. We shall go by train. Will you like that?’

‘I don’t know, miss. I hope so.’

‘You’ll love it.’

And I did. Hour after hour just watching the whole country roll out before me. Fields thick with grass, covered in real sheep and cows; church steeples poking out of the smoke above towns no bigger than Parliament Square; rivers, soft and ripply, with painted barges chugging slower than the ducks.

To see the places I have only read about rise up, swell into towns, then fade away to tiny dots as we rushed past in our great rumbling locomotive. Miss Kerr had given me a
Votes For Women
flag so whenever we stopped I waved it at everyone on the platform and got some cheery smiles back, as well as some very cool glances, so there are grey people everywhere, it seems.

‘But not enough to stay the march of progress.’ (Miss Annie’s words, not mine).

If I had not seen it myself I would not have believed it possible that so many, men as well as women, could crowd into a hall, and how their rumpus that would have deafened a whole army should melt away so you could hear a pin dropping as she spoke to them.

‘Men, women of Huddersfield, I thank you for turning out on so foul a night. And that, after a hard day’s labouring to keep food in your littl’uns’ bellies and a lump of coal on your fires. Happen that lump was one you hacked out yourself that didn’t quite make it to your Member of Parliament’s fireplace.’ There was a great burst of laughter.

‘Well, you have come, and I honour you for it. Your time shall not be wasted, that I promise. I speak first to the women here. You tell me you long for justice, equality, the right to a fair wage for your labour. I hear you, loud and clear, but does that man who each year takes his seat in the great palace of Westminster on your behalf? Your “Government representative”? Does he hear you?
No
. Why not? Because you do not have a vote. And without a vote you cannot influence one hair on the head of this man who gains so handsome a living from strutting around the Parliament buildings like Cock o’ the Roost, with a few hundred other peacocks to share his good fortune with. You cannot put him in there. You cannot kick him out. You are but a woman. Therefore I tell you again,
you do not count.
Yet where is the man that can sew on a button or bake a pie or sit all night with an ailing child then rise at dawn to make his snap and when he comes home of a night, wash the soot off his back and the muck off his clothes and feed himself and stretch his wages round the rent, the food, the family? If he’s here, will he please stand up that we may look upon so wonderful a creature.’

There was much laughter and jibing at this but the men took it in good part, as indeed they had cause to, for Miss Annie went on to say how, without their support it would take ten times as long to bring the politicians round.

‘If you men will join with us and raise your voices as one with ours, how then can they pretend this is some idle petty fancy, peculiar to a few flighty women whose tiny brains cannot address themselves to matters of great state? Let them see that you, the true backbone of this mighty country, know
how to value and respect the creatures that gave you life and nurtured you. Your own mothers, the mothers of your children, your sisters, your daughters – let this government see that you are not ashamed to call us women your equals. Not ashamed and not afraid. Perhaps then they will learn to manage their own fear. For make no mistake, it is fear that drives them to deny us. Fear that the world will change and there will be no place for them within it. And they are right. For where is the place for ignorance, conceit and prejudice in a just world? The fight may be long and the battle weary but trust me, my dear friends, with your help, your support, your loyalty and above all, your courage we
shall
win through and then we shall look back on this time and say to our children and our children’s children, “I made a difference”.’

I have heard her speak and I have heard her cheered to the sky itself. As we journeyed back to London Miss Annie slapped her arms down on the table in front of me. ‘So what was that about talking like a lady?’ she asked.

More and more women are flocking to our support. Some of the letters that come in are so learned I have to take them to Miss Kerr to find out their meaning! How wonderful to know such words and be able to use them. And this year we are to have our own Parliament! I wonder no one has thought of it before. On the day after the Government open theirs, we are to meet at Caxton Hall and open ours. I suppose it will mean more marching. Why do they always open the Parliament in the winter, I wonder, unless it be to discourage the likes of us? Well, they will have to think of better than that to put us off.

You would think they had been listening to my very thoughts! If cold and sleet and hail were not enough to fright a band of women, then let them be trampled under foot by horses.

Miss Christabel brought the news. ‘It seems the Government persists in its refusal. We have been patient. We have been very patient. Perhaps now we should tell ourselves that we have been patient long enough. The time has come for action.
Deeds Not Words
shall be our motto from now on. Let us take our argument to the very portals of government and beyond, into the very heart of democracy. Rise up, women, with courage in your hearts, for Truth will ever triumph when Justice hides its face. Rise up!’

And like a thunderous wave breaking, we all shouted, ‘Now!’ then, each clasping a copy of our resolution, we were formed into troops like an army and set off for the Parliament, an escort of police on either side. As we marched the whole sky echoed with our singing. ‘Rise up, women! For the fight is hard and long,’ and even the bobbies hummed along, some of them.

Just when I was thinking how nice some bobbies are, we turned the corner into Parliament Square and there was a bunch of the surliest ones you ever saw. On a shout they came pounding towards us, hoping to split us up, but we gripped hold of each other with all our might so not an elbow could pass between us. At this they became angry and tried to force a way, but as fast as we were parted we joined ranks again so that it was they who were split, and very silly they looked, too.