Things a Bright Girl Can Do

by Sally Nicholls

  May looked around. There was a boy beside her watching them with open curiosity.

  ‘Will it be dangerous?’ May asked him. He looked startled, and shook his head, rather furtively, as though ashamed of being caught looking.

  ‘Nah. You’ll be all right. Just stay inside till it’s over.’

  He was about her own age, or a little younger. And – May realised with a jump of surprise – he wasn’t a boy. He was a girl. A stocky girl, with short brown hair, in breeches and jacket and a flat cap like a boy. A girl holding a stick like the women preparing to go up against the police. May felt a shiver of something like excitement go through her. She’d heard the Suffragettes described as ‘mannish’ or ‘unsexed’ before – these were common cat-calls, she’d even heard them used against her own mother. But they were intended as insults. This girl was ‘mannish’, but she was in no way ‘unsexed’.

  Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Erotic was not a word many of May’s friends would have used; sex was not something most middle-class girls were expected to know anything about. But May had had it all explained to her at the age of twelve, with the help of the Family Medical Encyclopaedia. Eroticism was a relatively new concept however, and she found it thrilling. At fifteen, all sorts of unexpected things were erotic for May. Thousands of women, marching down the Strand, waving banners and singing suffrage songs, that was erotic. Poetry was erotic, good poetry anyway, the power, and the rhythm, and beauty of it. The back of the girls’ heads in school, their long shiny hair with the school ribbons, all in a row. And a girl with a cockney accent in a flat cap sent a shiver down her back. Like knowledge. Like a recognition. I know you, May thought, illogically. I know you.

  The girl turned back to the women she was standing with. May – suddenly desperate not to lose her – said, ‘You aren’t going to hit a policeman, are you? Are you going to get arrested?’

  ‘Na,’ said the girl. ‘The stick’s just to defend meself. They’re wicked cruel to women, policemen. But we’s ready.’ She kicked the stick casually with her foot, and added, ‘We does self-defence classes in Victoria Park on a Saturday.’

  Even that was erotic, the violence, even to a pacifist like May. You didn’t have to approve of a thing to find it erotic.

  ‘Do you think Miss Pankhurst’s here?’ May asked. The girl nodded.

  ‘I ’spect so. Probably in disguise,’ she added, knowingly.

  Just then, the gaslights dimmed. The people hushed. May waited, expecting to hear the old, familiar arguments. But what she heard was a voice from behind the stage curtains. ‘Friends and comrades,’ it said, and there was an instant murmur from the crowd.

  The girl said, ‘It’s her! That’s her!’ Her face was rapt.

  May said, ‘Mama, it’s Miss Pankhurst!’ and a woman behind her said, ‘Shh!’

  ‘They would like to stop me speaking to you –’ the voice was saying. May leant forward, thrilled, and became aware of a commotion behind her.

  Fists were hammering at the door, voices calling, ‘Open up in the name of the law!’

  ‘It’s the police!’ the girl said delightedly. ‘But they won’t let them in – look at them!’

  She was right. The crush of people in the hall was pushing against the door, blocking the policemen by the sheer force of their bodies. The crowd was cheering:

  ‘That’s right!’

  ‘Keep them back!’

  ‘Let her speak!’

  ‘But I am here today to tell you –’ Miss Pankhurst had to raise her voice to be heard above the clamour. Then, suddenly, there was more movement at the front of the hall. May drew in her breath. It was hard to see in the dim light, but figures were scrambling up onto the stage – two or three men, it looked like – and heading towards the curtain. Voices shouted from the audience:

  ‘Miss Pankhurst!’ and, ‘Miss Pankhurst! The police!’

  ‘Plainclothesmen!’ said the girl in the flat cap, in an ecstasy of indignation and excitement. ‘The stinking rats! Who do they think they are?’

  Miss Pankhurst appeared from behind the curtain. She was younger than May had expected, with a long, plain, rather melancholy face. She’d been hunger striking only the week before, May remembered. The plainclothesmen made a rush for her. More voices were shouting from the floor:

  ‘Jump!’

  ‘Jump!’

  ‘Miss Pankhurst, jump!’

  Miss Pankhurst jumped. Off the stage and into the audience, which caught her. The women roared. The policemen leapt after her and into the crowd. They began pushing against the massed women, but the women pushed back. Miss Pankhurst was being carried over their heads – or – was that her? No, it was another woman wearing her hat. Where had she gone? May was bewildered and exhilarated. The policemen fought their way through the Suffragettes, who fought back joyously, with fists and sticks and knotted lengths of rope; ‘Saturday nights’, they were called, May knew.

  Her mother grabbed hold of her arm.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said, breathlessly. May nodded.

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ she said, but her mother didn’t seem to think so.

  ‘We should leave!’ she said, but May couldn’t see how. They were being crushed on either side, and the crush was fiercest around the door, where the policemen were still fighting for entrance. May was being shoved on both sides by elbows and shoulders and pressing feet. A woman barrelled against her, pressing her into the girl in the flat cap. At the front of the room she saw – to her horror – a policeman lift a chair and smash it against the head of a woman who was obstructing his way through the melee. They had their truncheons out, she saw. Another policeman lifted a woman by her collar and threw her aside. The Suffragettes cried out in rage and flung themselves against him.

  ‘You said we wouldn’t be hurt!’ May’s mother yelled furiously at the girl in the flat cap. The girl ignored her. She was looking at a woman who was standing on a chair and peering through the hall’s windows.

  ‘They’re all around the hall!’ the woman called down. ‘They’ve got reinforcements – on horseback!’

  Another woman was forcing her way through the crowds, yelling. She was clambering up onto the backs of the other women. She was clawing at the window. She was carrying a fire extinguisher, and – heavens! – she turned it on and aimed it at the men outside. They could hear shrieks and yells and the screams of the horses as the water reached them. Outside, May could hear the men cursing as they pulled back from the hall. The Suffragettes cheered and rushed at the door, pushing out of it and into the melee.

  May’s mother called, ‘May!’ in terror, but May was swept along in the crush, pushed up against the girl in the flat cap. Despite her panic, a small part of her brain thrilled to this.

  ‘Why are they trying to get out?’ she yelled, over the pandemonium. ‘Aren’t they afraid?’

  ‘Course they ain’t!’ said the girl, scornfully. ‘Miss Pankhurst’s got to get out somehow, ain’t she?’ She gripped her stick, and for one brief, unpacifist moment, May wished she too had brought a weapon to use against the policemen and help free Miss Pankhurst.

  The crowds were fighting at the door. May was banged against the wall. Her chest was crushed, her skin red and sticky with heat. She felt breathless and a little dizzy. She kept hold of the sleeve of the girl in the flat cap, and to her relief, the girl didn’t try to break free.

  The press of bodies pushed them through the narrow doors and out into the welcome cold of the March evening. The noise the women were making was immense. The mounted police were still struggling to control their horses. May didn’t know much about horses, but these were obviously unhappy; their ears were back, and their eyes were wide, and although they were no longer rearing, they were moving in little distressed dances, as the policemen tried to soothe them. The policemen were pushing back against the press of women. Evidently they still hoped to trap Miss Pankhurst inside, and they were pushing back against the Suffragettes, trying to get to
the open door, but with little success. They had heavy oak truncheons, and horses, and they were, for the most part, bigger and stronger than the women. But the women had sticks and cudgels and Saturday nights. The women were furiously determined. And there were many, many more of them.

  The girl with the flat cap was forcing herself forward. May just wanted to escape. She could hear her mother’s voice in her ears; ‘One day, one of those women will get herself killed.’ A Suffragette had died last year, at the Epsom Derby, although they said that was a suicide. One of these women could easily be killed, tonight.

  But if she ran away, she would probably never see the girl again.

  The girl was yelling terrible things at the policemen, the sort of things May’s mother would definitely think gave the suffrage movement a bad name. She still clutched a stick, which she was struggling to bring upright.

  May cried, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s get to the edge.’ She was finding it hard to breathe. The girl began to force her way sideways in the crush. May was relieved, then a horrible thought struck her. Perhaps the girl didn’t want to escape. Perhaps she just wanted to get closer to the policemen.

  She fought to keep up with her, but it was almost impossible. Elbows and knees and hips and suffrage placards banged against her body.

  ‘Oh, please,’ she gasped. ‘Please, let me through.’

  And then suddenly, the pressure relaxed. The policemen were pulling back, admitting failure. May surged forward with the rest, struggling to keep her footing. She saw an old woman pushed to her knees, and shouted a warning. But the crowd ploughed forwards regardless, those at the front crying out indignantly at those pushing behind them, even as they themselves were forced to trample the woman down. For the first time, May was really afraid.

  And then they were free.

  The noise of the crowd was still deafening. The air smelt of sweat and fear and horses and coal-smoke from the nearby houses. May grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her, stumbling, out of the press of bodies and into an alleyway. The girl was gasping for breath. All May’s ribs were bruised and sore. She stumbled, and they fell together against a wall, sucking in air like long-distance runners.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said May, urgently. The girl took in a long, shuddering breath, and raised her head. Her face was red, and her hair stringy with sweat.

  ‘What d’you do that for?’ she demanded. ‘We was winning!’

  ‘We could have been killed!’ said May. She felt dizzy and rather dazed. Her whole body was tingling.

  ‘So?’ the girl demanded. She thrust her face up against May’s. All May could think was how much she wanted to kiss her. She leant forwards, almost unconsciously, and the girl jumped back, unnerved.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ she said. May stopped. ‘Who are you?’ she said.

  ‘I’m May,’ said May. ‘May Thornton. Who are you?’

  ‘Nell. Ellen. Nell. Nell Swancott.’

  Pleased to meet you, May almost said. She wanted to giggle.

  ‘What the hell—’ the girl began, but what she was about to say, May never discovered.

  There was a shadow at the end of the alleyway, and a voice said, ‘May! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’

  It was her mother, looking dishevelled, her face flushed and her hair a marvellous bird’s nest. There was a sharp, anxious note to her voice, which was most unusual for May’s mother.

  ‘Whatever were you doing hiding down here? Didn’t you know I was looking for you?’

  ‘I was just …’ May turned back to the girl, to explain.

  But she was gone.

  Coney Lane

  NELL MADE HER way down the alleys towards home in a daze. She felt bruised and sore and bewildered. But more than that, she was filled with an excitement so strong it was dizzying.

  Did that just happen? Did that girl really just try to kiss her? Part of her – a very large part – wanted to turn back and find her. To say, How did you know you could do that? Do people do that where you come from? Perhaps posh girls like May kissed each other all the time. Perhaps everyone did.

  But she couldn’t ask. And she couldn’t persuade herself to go back. In Nell’s world, girls like May flashed past at a distance. Sometimes people you knew got jobs working in their houses, sweeping their floors and minding their children. Sometimes you came across them at closer quarters – working in the infirmary perhaps, or marching with the Suffragettes. But you couldn’t just go up to them and demand to know why they had tried to kiss you.

  And you certainly couldn’t ask them to kiss you again.

  • • •

  It was late when she got back home, gone nine. She let herself into the house – nobody in Poplar locked their front doors – and climbed the stairs to the two rooms the family rented. The kitchen was, for once, quiet. Her parents were sitting by the fire; Mum darning a tear in Dot’s petticoat, Dad mending the sole of one of Bernie’s boots. The younger children were asleep next door; the baby in an orange crate by the bed. Later, Bernie would be turfed out of the bed and onto the sofa he shared with Nell’s older brother, Bill. Bill, who was sixteen, was out somewhere, as usual.

  Mum looked up as Nell came in.

  ‘All right, lovey?’ Then, seeing her face, ‘Weren’t trouble, were there?’

  ‘Bit.’ She felt the teapot on the table – still warm. Good. She poured herself a cup. ‘Should’ve seen them Suffragettes, though! They was bloody brilliant.’

  Her mother frowned.

  ‘You just be careful, my girl,’ she said. ‘Marching’s one thing, but I don’t want you setting fire to no postboxes, you hear me? We ain’t standing bail if you ends up in’t clink.’

  Nell glanced at her father, who grinned at her.

  ‘Always liked a girl who were handy with a match,’ he said.

  Nell’s mother whacked him. ‘And you can keep your mouth shut, and all,’ she said.

  The East End of London was the heart of the docklands, and one of the poorest parts of the city. Fourteen people lived in Nell’s four-room house – her family of eight in the two rooms upstairs, and Mrs O’Farrell and her five children in the two rooms below. The other houses on their street were equally full. Most of the people Nell knew lived noisy, outdoor lives; in and out of each other’s houses, in and out of each other’s business.

  All kinds of people came to the East End from the docks: Jews from Eastern Europe, Lascars on the boats from India, Irish migrants, even a few men from the West Indies and Africa. There was a strong tradition of activism – Nell’s father could remember the Dockers’ Strike of 1889, and had once gone to hear the Labour MP Keir Hardie speak at a rally in Victoria Park. And now there were the Suffragettes.

  Nell had found the Suffragettes last year, when she was fourteen.

  She’d known about them vaguely, of course. She knew where the Women’s Hall was, and one quite often saw them in the street, standing on top of orange crates, shouting about women’s rights, and giving out handbills. It was good sport to watch them arguing with the men who tried to heckle them. And sometimes people threw things at them, and that was even better.

  Mrs O’Farrell, their landlady living downstairs, said the Suffragettes were disgraceful women who ought to be at home looking after their husbands. But Nell’s father liked them.

  ‘Nice to see a lady looking out for herself,’ he’d say. And, ‘They’re all right, they are. They know what’s what.’

  ‘Would you like to be a Suffragette, Mum?’ Nell asked her mother, but she just sighed, and said, ‘With six kids and a house to keep! I ain’t got time to go marching on Parliament. Not but what I wouldn’t like a vote, mind. But whoever listens to what women want?’

  Nell’s mother was a piece-worker. For most of Nell’s childhood, she had made shirts for a factory in Poplar, for which she was paid four pence per shirt. Each shirt took an afternoon to finish. It was hard, demanding work, but Mrs Swancott took it because it could be done at home, and she could nurse
the baby and keep an eye on Johnnie, who was three. Nell’s dad was a stevedore on the docks.

  Nell had always been a tomboy, as far back as she could remember. She had always resented the bitter gender segregation of Coney Lane, where the girls sat on the steps and minded the family baby, and the boys played cricket, and soldiers, and other noisy, rowdy games.

  ‘Mind the baby!’ was a command she’d grown up with since early childhood. It never occurred to any of the Coney Lane mothers to yell it at the boys; looking after the baby was women’s work, as was helping with the never-ending washing, and mending, and black-leading, and baking. Both Nell and her sister Dot had been taken out of school every Monday to help with the weekly wash, along with most of the other girls in their Board School. Even as a little girl, Nell had complained.

  ‘Why’s it always me what has to do it? Why can’t the boys help?’

  But her mother always had an answer.

  ‘Because you’ll have to run a house one day, and it’s never too soon to learn how.’

  Nell had huffed at this.

  ‘No fear!’ she’d said, right from when she was Dot’s age. ‘I’m not going to marry, ever, or have children. I’m going to live absolutely alone in a house with just me in it, and live off bread and dripping and pork pies.’

  But no one had believed her.

  Nell had always been restless. As a child, she’d followed her brother Bill into the cricket games, demanding her right to ‘play too’. Nell was good at cricket, better than Bill was, so no one had argued much.

  The boys’ clothes went way back too. It was hard to run or climb or fight in skirts and petticoats, and Nell had always hated the way she looked in them. With her square face and jaw, she felt like a toy soldier dressed as a ballerina doll. (None of the Swancott children had toy soldiers or ballerina dolls, or indeed any toys at all, but Nell had seen them in the toyshop on the high street, and been fascinated.)

  How did girls cope, squeezed into petticoats and pinafores and bodices and corsets and combinations and stockings and suspenders and spencers and all the rest of it, all day, every day? It was awful. You were too hot in summer and you were squeezed all the time, and you didn’t have pockets – how did girls cope without pockets? On Sundays, when Nell was forced, protesting, into a Sunday frock, she felt like she was being slowly smothered to death.