Things a Bright Girl Can Do

by Sally Nicholls

  May had gone nearly all the way around the Exhibition Hall before she found Nell. She had a handful of bills about women’s suffrage, which she was evidently supposed to be giving out, but right now she was taking a break. She was leaning against one of the pillars by the entranceway, smoking a pipe, and looking out of the door.

  May, watching her from the shelter of a stall about a woman’s co-operative in Bow, thought she had never seen anything so attractive in all her life. The flat cap worn low over her eyebrows. The slow, sensual drawing in on the pipe, then the release of smoke. The boy’s shirt tucked into the breeches, with the short, dark hair curling over the collar. After the first moment of uncertainty, there was really nothing masculine about Nell. That was what was so exciting about it. A boy who looked like a boy would have meant nothing to May. A girl who looked like a boy, however …

  Another girl would have been nervous. May simply went up to her and said, ‘Hello.’

  Nell started. For a moment, she looked almost panicked. At last she said, in obvious confusion, ‘You’re that girl.’

  ‘Yes,’ said May. ‘Would you rather I went away? I can if you like.’

  Nell’s eyes bulged. She choked on her pipe-smoke, and began to cough. As May watched, she bent over, still coughing. May waited. At last, wheezing, Nell said, ‘It’s all right. You can stay.’

  ‘Huzzah!’ May beamed at her. ‘I say, I am sorry about the other day. I didn’t mean to frighten you. You needn’t worry, I won’t kiss you again if you wouldn’t like it.’ Nell flinched, and looked around in obvious alarm. May was rather amused. ‘Don’t fuss,’ she said. ‘No one’s listening.’

  Nell grabbed her arm. She dragged her through the doorway to the hall, past the clerks at their desks and out onto the street.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said.

  ‘I told you,’ said May. ‘My name’s May. Mama and I came to hear Miss Pankhurst speak, because we think she’s interesting. And then I came here today because I wanted to see you. Because I think you’re interesting. You do want to see me again, don’t you? Because I can go away if you don’t.’

  She waited. At last, almost reluctantly, Nell said, ‘I don’t want you to go away.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t,’ May said cheerfully. She sat down on a bench, and the girl, still reluctant, sat down beside her. She looked at May rather sullenly, her fingers playing with a loose thread on her cuff. May, who was rarely daunted, said, ‘You’re a Sapphist, aren’t you? Like me?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘A Sapphist. Like Sappho. She was a poet. It means a lady who loves other ladies. Like me.’

  The blank expression had gone. Now Nell’s dark face looked almost hungry.

  ‘You mean there’s other folk what does it?’

  ‘Of course there are!’ May leant forward eagerly. ‘Heaps of the suffragist ladies are in love with each other.’

  ‘Not really, though?’

  ‘Oh yes. Miss Payne and Miss Jones have a flat together. That’s what the newspapers mean when they talk about ‘mannish’ women, only they don’t like to come out and say so, because it isn’t a bit respectable. And there’s the Ladies of Llangollen – they weren’t Suffragettes, but they had a house together, and were friends with Shelley, and the Duke of Wellington and – oh, heaps of people. Mama told me about them.’

  Nell still looked dazed.

  ‘Are you off your chump?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said May. ‘How would you know, though? If you were? Do you ever wonder about that? I do. A girl in my form told me once that ghosts are people who don’t know they’re dead, and I used to worry for simply ages after that I was a ghost and didn’t know it. But—’

  ‘Stop,’ begged Nell. ‘Please. You do make me head ache. I’m supposed to be giving out handbills, not listening to you talk cobblers.’

  May subsided.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. She watched Nell. The bent head. The boys’ flat cap. The fingers still playing with the threads on her jacket sleeve. The urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming. She could feel tingles of excitement running up the inside of her arms. Nell looked up and caught her hungry look.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘Not here.’

  ‘All right,’ said May. She smiled at Nell. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll find somewhere.’

  Knickerbocker Glories and Blood

  IT WAS HETTY’S birthday in May. She was eleven. Teddy took her and all her sisters for knickerbocker glories at the ice-cream parlour on the high street in honour of the occasion.

  ‘Why haven’t you been arrested yet?’ said Kezia, to Evelyn. This, to Kezia, was the whole point of being a Suffragette. What better way to annoy Father and Mother than being thrown into a prison cell? Ideally one with rats and straw and chains. Kezia had a decidedly medieval view of the justice system.

  ‘They don’t seem to be very arrest-y sort of Suffragettes in Hampstead,’ said Evelyn. She scooped her ice cream out of the bottom of the glass, and frowned at it. She wasn’t entirely sure what she thought about being arrested. The Suffragettes had a policy of refusing to eat in prison, to protest the government’s refusal to treat them as political prisoners. The government had decided to force them to eat anyway. Evelyn had read an account of a hunger strike and force-feeding in Votes for Women, and it had sounded deeply unpleasant. The woman had been strapped to a chair, kicking and fighting, while the feeding-tube was rammed down her throat. Later, alone in the cell, she had forced herself to vomit up the food again. Somewhere in this process, her eyes had turned completely bloodshot – a surprisingly disturbing detail. Force-feeding wasn’t supposed to happen any more, but it still did sometimes, Evelyn knew. Either way, getting arrested seemed rather extreme.

  ‘I already told you,’ said Teddy cheerfully. ‘If you want to annoy your father, we could just elope. Much less hassle, and rather more fun, don’t you think? A small castle of our own in Gretna Green – a herd of highland cows in patriotic ribbons – bagpipes at the reception would be rather jolly, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Ass,’ said Evelyn. She wasn’t entirely sure what she thought about Teddy, either. Of course, she couldn’t imagine marrying anyone else. But wasn’t love supposed to feel like a hurricane?

  Teddy didn’t feel like a hurricane. Teddy felt like home.

  She didn’t say any of this, of course. Instead, she said, ‘Father would never let you get away with it. He’d come and fight a duel for my honour atween the clumps o’ purple heather. And then you’d shoot him – the young swain always does – and leave me pale and sorrowing on his bloodstained breast. Which might make family occasions rather awkward.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Teddy. ‘You might get lucky. He might shoot me!’

  Evelyn licked the last drop of ice cream from the pointed tip of her spoon.

  ‘Or,’ she said, ‘we could do this instead.’

  She opened her copy of Votes for Women and showed him the page. It was an advertisement for an action a few weeks away. The king would be in procession down Pall Mall, and the assembled Suffragettes would try and pass a message to him. Hetty and Kezia scrambled to see.

  ‘It’s a march!’ said Hetty. ‘A proper march! Do you think there’ll be girls with flowers – and trumpets – and singing …?’

  ‘No,’ said Teddy gravely. He took the newspaper from Evelyn and frowned at it. ‘I think there’ll be violence, and arrests. Your women have a rotten time on these things, Evelyn. I’m dashed sure I wouldn’t want to go.’ He was looking at her intently. She scowled. Being told what to do always made Evelyn pig-headed. ‘You aren’t really going to do this, are you? It’s bound to be frightfully dangerous.’

  Evelyn took the paper back from him.

  ‘I jolly well am,’ she said. She saw his expression, and something in it made her falter. She pushed on regardless. ‘And if you don’t like it, you can just come with me, that’s all.’

  He didn’t reply, but she could see how troubl
ed he was. He said no more, however, until the ice creams were finished and the four of them were up on the Heath. Hetty had new birthday roller-skates to play with, and even Kezia was not too old to resist the lure of a clear path and a newly oiled set of skates. Teddy and Evelyn wandered behind them. He took her arm and tucked it into his and said, ‘Don’t you think you ought to chuck this in now?’

  She didn’t answer. Teddy said gently, ‘Evelyn … how much does it matter, the vote? You can’t think it’s worth the things these women do. Setting off bombs, arson attacks … Marches are one thing – I don’t say I’m against marches – but rallies like this one … they’re dangerous, Evelyn. I’ve been reading those papers too; people get hurt at those things. They get arrested, and then it’s all hunger strikes and force-feeding and whatever else that dreadful man Asquith dreams up. Is a vote worth dying for? Is it worth killing for?’

  ‘Now you are being absurd,’ Evelyn said. ‘Suffragettes don’t kill people. You know they don’t. Damage to property only.’

  ‘Oh, don’t they, though?’ said Teddy. ‘What about that business in Ireland, then?’ And, seeing her uncomprehending face, ‘You must have heard about that, Evelyn.’

  Evelyn glared. The world, as far as she could tell, was full of things she must have heard of. None of the Collis girls read newspapers, as Teddy knew perfectly well. There was only one newspaper in their house – it arrived in the morning, was read by Evelyn’s father over breakfast, put into his pocket, and taken off on the omnibus, from whence it was never seen again. The only news Evelyn knew about was the sort everyone talked about, like the sinking of the Titanic.

  Teddy explained. In 1912, four Suffragettes had tried to set fire to a packed Theatre Royal in Dublin, where the prime minister, Mr Asquith, was due to speak on Home Rule. One of the women had tried to set the reels of film in the cinematograph box alight. The fire had quickly been extinguished, but had it not been, the consequences could have been disastrous.

  ‘And there’s that woman at the Derby last year,’ Teddy went on. ‘The one who was queer in the head.’ Evelyn did know about her. Emily Wilding Davison. She’d thrown herself in front of the king’s horse and killed herself.

  ‘She wasn’t queer in the head,’ she said. ‘She was a martyr for freedom. A soldier. If a soldier did something like that, you’d say he was a hero.’

  Teddy sighed.

  ‘I know you want to go to Oxford,’ he said. ‘I can’t for the life of me see why, but I can see it must be perfectly beastly to have everyone tell you you can’t. But how is it going to change anything, joining these women?’

  Evelyn scowled. She didn’t know the answer to his question, exactly. Only that she was fed up of taking things without a fight.

  She said this to Teddy, who laughed.

  ‘When did you ever take anything without a fight?’

  ‘I mean it!’ Evelyn said furiously.

  ‘So do I,’ said Teddy. He watched her fondly. ‘See here,’ he said, ‘you don’t believe all that bosh the Suffragettes talk, do you? You can’t think Parliament’s going to start handing out old-age pensions, and free orphanages, and equal pay and whatever else, do you, just because women have a vote? I mean, it all sounds jolly nice. But you know it’s a pipe dream.’ He paused. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t. And even if it is a pipe dream … Teddy, I don’t care. I can’t know that something is possible, and sit back and not do anything to make it real.’

  Secrets and Confidences

  MAY’S SCHOOL WAS a small, rather shabby but very respectable establishment called Brightview School for Girls, two ’bus rides away from Bow. May liked Brightview well enough, particularly the plays and the gymnastics. There were twelve girls in the Fourth Form, including May’s particular friends, Barbara and Winifred. Winifred thought Emmeline Pankhurst was a harpy, but of course girls ought to have the vote if they wanted it. Barbara thought it would be rather splendid to go to prison, although she couldn’t imagine her mother marching in the street, and didn’t May think it queer to have a mother who did? But mostly they weren’t that interested. Winifred’s father was a vicar, and Winifred had to spend Sundays helping her mother run the Sunday School. Barbara’s mother put on musical evenings, at which Barbara was forced to hammer out beastly sonatas on the piano. Parents were awfully peculiar creatures, everyone knew that.

  It wasn’t unusual for girls at May’s school to develop feelings for older girls. May herself had had several very interesting encounters with Fifth Former Margaret Howard in the stationery cupboard. But so-called romantic friendships were not quite the same thing as Sapphism. It was understood that they were just something that happened when you were at school and didn’t know any boys, and when you grew up and met your future husband, those feelings would be replaced by something ‘real’. May knew perfectly well that what she felt for the girl in the flat cap was ‘real’, but she also knew without being told that this view of things would not be accepted at Brightview. She had never even tried to talk about Sapphism with Barbara and Winifred.

  She kept her confidences for a party the next week, held by one of her mother’s Bolshevik friends. For a Bolshevik, the friend lived in rather a grand sort of house in Bloomsbury; inside, however, in keeping with Bolshevik principles, it was furnished in an incredibly chaotic fashion. The room the party was held in was larger than the entire ground floor of May’s house, and full of an odd assortment of dining-room chairs and battered occasional tables. Several of the chairs were missing their backs, and in one corner of the room a whole strip of wallpaper was peeling off the wall.

  May and her mother paid their respects to the Bolshevik, then May looked eagerly around the room. She soon found the person she was searching for: a girl of eighteen or nineteen, perched on a window-seat, drinking red wine out of a teacup and swinging her legs. Her dark hair was bobbed and her lips were painted bright crimson. Between them rested a black cigarette-holder, with a lit cigarette glowing in its end.

  This was Sadie Van Hyning, a daughter of an acquaintance of May’s mother. All the year she was thirteen, May had nursed a deep and fervent passion for Sadie which, naturally enough, had been met with a detached but affectionate amusement. Sadie herself was in love with a terrifying young woman called Priscilla, who – rather daringly – lived entirely by herself in a bed-sitting room in Bloomsbury, worked as a sort of social secretary for an old woman in Mayfair, and was rumoured to be an anarchist.

  Sadie was the sort of young woman Winifred or Barbara’s mothers would have entirely disapproved of. May’s mother thought she was rather sweet. May adored her.

  ‘Sadie!’ she called. ‘Sadie!’

  Sadie glanced up, and raised one black-gloved hand in acknowledgement. May pushed her way through an earnest-looking cluster of socialists and sat herself on the window-seat beside her.

  ‘Hullo, my darling.’ Sadie put the black-gloved hand (still holding the cigarette) around May’s neck. ‘Come and tell Sadie all about it. I can see you’re simply bursting with it, whatever it is.’

  May wriggled with pleasure.

  ‘I’m in love,’ she announced. Sadie raised her eyebrow in an elegant fashion. May, rather disloyally, wondered if she’d practised in the mirror.

  ‘Darling!’ she cried. ‘Not really! And who is this divine object who’s stolen your heart? Tell me everything.’

  May did, with great willingness. She could talk about Nell for ever, she thought – or, she could to the right person at least. Sadie listened with an uncharacteristic patience.

  ‘Don’t you think she sounds tremendous?’ May finished rapturously. ‘I bet you simply long to meet her, don’t you?’

  ‘My dear, she sounds perfectly ravishing,’ Sadie said. She blew a smoke ring over May’s head. ‘You will be careful though, won’t you?’

  ‘Careful?’

  ‘Mhmm. A girl like that … well … her mother might not be as understanding about her abnormalities as yours is
. You won’t go blabbing your little love affair all around the houses, will you?’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t!’ May was indignant. ‘And it isn’t an abnormality. Mama’s got a frightfully interesting book all about it, that says we’re just as normal as anyone else is.’

  Sadie laughed.

  ‘Of course we are, darling,’ she said. ‘All the same, though. I don’t know that they’d quite see it that way in Poplar.’

  A Drawing-room Meeting

  TEDDY’S MOTHER LOOKED at the invitation card in her hand and sighed.

  ‘A talk by Mrs Proffitt on theosophy,’ she said. ‘I suppose I ought to attend – she’ll be most offended if I don’t. But really! Can’t people think of more interesting things to hold meetings about?’

  It was Saturday afternoon. Teddy’s mother, who was very fond of Evelyn and vaguely aware that there were difficulties at home, had invited her round for ‘tea’. Evelyn had gone willingly enough – she liked Teddy’s parents. One got the distinct impression that they felt they’d ‘done’ parenting with Teddy’s two older brothers, Herbert and Stephen. When Teddy himself had arrived, they’d more or less let him bring himself up, which he had done, it must be owned, with a fair degree of success.

  Mrs Moran was heavily involved in the local church and the Women’s Institute, which meant an awful lot of fêtes, and galas, and lectures, and recitals and, as in this case, ‘drawing-room meetings’; where a speaker was invited to lecture to a collection of the hostess’s friends. Evelyn had sat through enough of these evenings herself to sympathise. They were usually a frightful bore.

  ‘It could be worse,’ she said. ‘Last week, some awful female from Mother’s church made us sit through two hours of magic-lantern slides from the Holy Land. Two hours! You wouldn’t have thought there were two hours’ worth of slides from the Holy Land. I say, though!’ She sat up. ‘You should hold a lecture on the Suffragettes! They’re jolly interesting. They do drawing-room meetings. You could get someone to talk about being in prison, and hunger strikes, and how to throw stones through windows. Only, they’d prob’ly try and recruit everyone to the cause, but I don’t suppose your friends would mind that. They can always say no, can’t they?’