Things a Bright Girl Can Do

by Sally Nicholls

  ‘Well, of course they could,’ said Teddy’s mother, brightening. She was a nice, rather tired-looking woman some fifteen years older than Evelyn’s mother, very kind but with a permanent sense that the world was a little too much effort to negotiate. ‘I must say, I do think they’re awfully plucky young women. Do you think Mrs Pankhurst would come and talk to us? That would be a coup.’

  ‘Um,’ said Evelyn. ‘Well. Probably not. I think she’s quite busy running the WSPU, you know.’

  ‘Oh yes, I suppose so,’ said Teddy’s mother. ‘Well, how about someone who’s been in prison, then? I’m sure that would sound very dramatic on the invitation cards. I’ve never met anyone who’s been in prison – well, except for Edith’s young man, who did three weeks for stealing a set of fruit knives. I had to speak very firmly to Edith about him – not at all the sort of character one wants visiting one’s kitchen. And then all the silver cake forks disappeared, and I was sure it was him, and really, I was in quite a quandary, because one can hardly accuse someone of something like that without proof, can one? But then it turned out Peggy had put them away in the drawer with the table-napkins, so it was all a fuss about nothing. But a prisoner of conscience is a different thing altogether, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t exactly think any of the Hampstead Suffragettes have been to prison,’ said Evelyn carefully. ‘But I expect Miss Wilkinson will know someone who has. I’ll see what I can do.’

  A Supper Guest

  ‘MAY I HAVE a friend round for supper?’ said May. It was evening. She was doing her French prep at the dining table; her mother was writing letters on the other side.

  ‘Of course, darling,’ her mother said. ‘Is it someone I know?’

  ‘No,’ said May. ‘She’s a new friend. But I swear you’ll like her.’

  She wrote Nell a letter, at the address Nell had given her, formally inviting her. The reply came by return of post, accepting, but explaining that Nell did not finish work until six o’clock, so would be a little later than invited. May went to explain to her mother, who raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Who is this friend of yours, darling?’ she said, and May said airily, ‘Oh, just someone I met.’

  When Nell rang the bell, however, May answered the door herself, not trusting Mrs Barber to understand that Nell was the person invited to supper. She found Nell waiting uncertainly on the doorstep. She knew the gentry ‘dressed for dinner’, but the only decent outfit she owned was her Sunday frock, which she abhorred. She was damned if she was going to wear it to visit this new … new … whatever May was. Nell was very suspicious of people who ‘played up’ to the upper-classes. She told herself fiercely that if the Labour MP Keir Hardie could wear a cloth cap in Parliament, surrounded by all those toffs in toppers, she could wear factory clothes to May’s.

  But here on the doorstep, she did wonder if that might have been a mistake.

  May had, in fact, changed out of her school gymslip and into her green velvet in honour of Nell’s visit. But in general she and her mother did not dress for dinner, except when guests were expected. Twentieth-century Quakers might not dress in Quaker grey any more, but needless extravagance was frowned upon. She beamed when she saw Nell, and said, ‘Hello! Come in! Come and meet Mama!’ and the tightness inside Nell relaxed a little. For the first time, she allowed herself to look forward to what might be coming next.

  Nell seemed unsure of herself, May thought. Nervous. She nodded at May’s mother, and said, ‘Nice to meet you, ma’am.’

  May’s mother said, ‘It’s so lovely to meet you, Nell. What a sensible outfit that is! And please don’t call me ma’am. We’re an egalitarian household here.’

  She stayed quiet all through supper, answering May’s mother’s questions with her eyes down. May listened with interest to her answers. She learnt that Nell had five brothers and sisters, that her father was a stevedore, and that she herself worked in a jam factory. Her table manners were exaggeratedly polite, which amused May, who had rather expected her to tip up the glass like Pip in Great Expectations. She didn’t know that Nell was desperately watching the two of them to see how it was supposed to be done. And her eyes went round when introduced to Mrs Barber.

  After supper, May’s mother said, ‘Why don’t you take a slice of seed-cake up to your room, girls?’ and Nell’s eyes went even rounder.

  ‘Coo!’ she said, as they went out. ‘Cake, whenever you wants it! You is lucky.’

  ‘Not whenever,’ said May. ‘Only when Mrs Barber’s been baking. The stairs are through here, past the parlour.’

  Nell peeped round the parlour door, which was the one formal room in the house, and the only public room which was kept free of the endless clutter of suffrage handbills, and newspapers, and banners, and rosettes, which spilled all over the back room, Mama’s bedroom, and the hall. It was a dark, rather old-fashioned room, with a stuffed weasel in a glass case, a stiff Victorian ottoman in faded brocade which nobody ever sat on and Mama’s piano against the wall. Nell said, ‘Coo! What a room!’

  ‘Isn’t it ghastly?’ May said. ‘Mama uses it for piano lessons mostly. I’m supposed to practise in here too, but I’m trying to persuade her to let me drop it. It’s not like I’ll ever be any earthly good at piano, and you can’t think what a bore it is, bashing out all those beastly scales every day.’

  Nell didn’t answer. May glanced at her; she looked a little bewildered. She wondered suddenly if that ‘Coo!’ had been admiring.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you upstairs.’

  May’s bedroom was rather plain. There was a bed, with a rose-coloured counterpane, and a print of Sir Isumbras at the Ford over the mantelpiece, and a dressing-table with a mirror which had been moved to May’s room because it had begun to spot, and a china shepherdess, which May kept out because it had been a present from her grandmother. There was a little bookcase with three untidy shelves of books, and a chest of drawers which fitted nowhere else, and an enormous mahogany wardrobe inherited from an uncle. Around the dressing-table mirror, May had stuck up picture-postcards, mostly on suffrage themes, although there was one advertising A LOVELY DAY IN MARGATE, and a couple showing Figures from High Life. These were both of aristocratic ladies in ball gowns, and looked rather incongruous in the utilitarian room. May saw Nell looking and said, pointing to a dark-haired woman in a long silk dress, ‘She’s my favourite.’

  She gave Nell a conspiratorial smile, but Nell did not smile back. She was wary, May could see. There was a tightness to her, a tenseness, like a boxer, readying for a fight. May had never actually seen a boxer readying for a fight, but there was something in the muscles along Nell’s back that reminded her of a picture in a storybook she’d had as a little girl. You could see the shape of Nell’s muscles through the tight cloth of her jacket. The clothes she wore were evidently second-hand. They’d been cut to fit someone tall and thin and on Nell, who was short and broad and squat, they had a somewhat misshapen look to them. There was something exciting about her tight clothes, though. It was, in a queer way, more erotic than seeing a naked woman. Her skin and soft flesh, there just below the surface, close enough to touch. What would Nell do if May touched her? Would she be afraid? Or did she long and long for it too? May was almost sure that she did. There was something in the hungry way she looked at May, something in the way her glance had lingered over the ladies in the ball gowns stuck to the wall.

  May swallowed. She came over and sat beside her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. Her mouth was dry, and she thought for a moment that she wouldn’t be able to speak. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  Nell’s wary expression did not change.

  ‘You should see where we lives,’ she said. ‘Whole family has two rooms the size of this. Eight of us. And you have a whole room to yourself! What wouldn’t I do with me own room!’

  The temptation was too much for May.

  ‘What would you do, with your own room?’ she said.

 
; Nell thought. Then she grinned.

  ‘I’d have a whole bed to meself,’ she said. ‘And I’d come home from work, and I’d just lie in it. And I’d stretch out me arms and me legs as wide as they’d go. And then I’d ring the bell for that slavey of yours, and I’d say, ‘Bring me two slices of seed-cake in bed, and look sharp about it!’’

  May had never rung for Mrs Barber and asked her to bring her seed-cake in bed in her life. Even Mama never exactly ordered anything.

  ‘Mrs Barber, dear,’ she’d say. ‘You couldn’t be an angel and do the dining room over tonight instead of tomorrow, could you? Only Miss Hazelwood said she might call round, and it’s still rather gluey from the banners May and I were making, and I would help, only I’ve got these circulars to take round, and May’s already late for her rehearsal, aren’t you, darling? I’m awfully sorry to put you out.’

  Mrs Barber had practically raised May; she was more likely to give May orders than the other way around. But she didn’t bother explaining that to Nell. Instead, she leant ever-so-slightly closer, her eyes never leaving Nell’s.

  ‘Is that all you’d do?’ she said, softly.

  Nell tensed. Her face was so close that May could feel the breath from her parted lips against her cheek. She could see the mark of an old scar under her eye, and the tide-line of dirt behind her ear, where she’d washed her face after leaving the factory. She could see the lines and tiny craters in her skin, and a freckle on her nose. Nell’s breath was shallow. Her cheeks were flushed. But she didn’t move or speak. She simply sat there, her mouth slightly open, her dark eyes never leaving May’s blue ones, watching her with a curious intensity of expectation, waiting.

  May leant forward so that her lips were touching Nell’s. Nell drew in her breath as though she’d been given an electric shock. She was trembling. May touched her dark hair and drew it off her cheek. Nell’s lips opened, and then they were kissing, properly kissing, and May felt as though the electricity had been transferred to her body, and she was crackling with it, all over, flooding her arms and hands with electrical charge.

  They came apart and looked at each other. Nell said, fiercely, ‘Where’d you learn to do that?’ She sounded angry, as though she thought May had been holding kissing-girls tea parties every Saturday and not sending her an invite.

  ‘Margaret Howard in the stationery cupboard,’ said May. The mood had gone, and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or sorry. ‘Girls are always having pashes on each other at my school. Mama says it’s all our unresolved sexual frustration. Didn’t they at yours?’

  ‘No,’ said Nell. She looked a bit bewildered. ‘We had boys.’

  May smiled, her open, wide-mouthed smile. She was so full of happiness, she felt as though it was overflowing. She wanted to kiss Nell again. She wanted to find out everything about her; her family, her home, her work, to gobble it all up and make it her own. She wanted to touch Nell, to see what she wore under her grubby blue jersey; not a corset or a bodice, surely? A shirt? A vest?

  ‘Quakers say all life is sacramental,’ she said, instead. She reached out and touched Nell’s lips. Nell flinched. ‘Even this,’ she said, very gently. ‘Even this.’

  Mother, May I?

  AFTER SHE’D GONE, May wandered downstairs. Her mother was sitting by the fireplace, reading a copy of the Daily Herald. She looked up as May came in.

  ‘I like your friend,’ she said.

  ‘So do I,’ said May. She came and leant against the side of her mother’s chair. Her mother put her arm round her.

  ‘My little girl, growing up,’ she said, which May supposed was her way of telling her that she had a very good idea of what had been going on upstairs, and she didn’t exactly disapprove. ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘I’m always careful,’ said May, which was a joke. May was many things, but cautious was not one of them. Her mother laughed.

  ‘Don’t hurt her,’ she said, which seemed like an odd thing to say; surely Mama ought to be more worried about May getting hurt? ‘She doesn’t look like a child who’s had much experience of the world,’ she said, which was even odder; Nell had left school, after all, and had a job, and been on Suffragette marches where one attacked policemen with sticks. It seemed to May that she had far more experience of the world than May did herself. ‘To a child like that … you’re a lot to lose.’

  ‘Nell isn’t a child,’ May said. ‘She’s fifteen.’ Her mother smiled, and kissed her.

  ‘It’s nice to see you so happy,’ she said. ‘Just … you have a lot of power over her, you know. Think about how you use it. She doesn’t look like a girl who’s had much out of life, that’s all.’

  Belonging

  TEDDY HAD NOT mentioned the action at Buckingham Palace again. Perhaps he hoped it would quietly be forgotten, and over the last couple of weeks Evelyn had found herself wondering if perhaps it would be. Then she told herself firmly that that would be funking it. Other women went to prison for their beliefs. They starved themselves. If they could do that, Evelyn could march down a street.

  And if Teddy felt so strongly about it, he could damn well come with her.

  When she put this to him, he agreed, grumbling.

  ‘Though I feel we’ve already taken our share of edible missiles for the cause,’ he said, as he met her at the omnibus stop. ‘Are you getting the wind up yet? Because if you are, we could always go for a picnic instead. Or to the pictures. Or there’s a chap I know who’s having a luncheon party—’

  ‘I’m not getting windy,’ said Evelyn, firmly.

  ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘Look here, old thing, the king isn’t going to care about your bally missive. Why don’t we go to the zoological gardens instead? We could have a ride on an elephant. I haven’t had a ride on an elephant since I was six years old.’

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be a feminist?’ said Evelyn.

  ‘I am,’ said Teddy. ‘I’m the sort of feminist who doesn’t want the woman he loves to get clonked over the head by a policeman. We’re a small but vocal minority.’

  ‘Ass,’ said Evelyn.

  The aim of the action was to present a deputation to the king. Ministers and Members of Parliament being so unsympathetic to the cause, the Suffragettes had decided to bypass them, and go right to the top. They would march from Grosvenor Square to the Wellington Arch on Constitution Hill, break through the police cordon, and hand their petition to the king himself as he rode past. The action had been publicised across Britain, and women from all sorts of suffrage societies were expected to attend.

  The Hampstead Suffragettes gathered at the omnibus stop by the church, and rode into town together, banners under their arms and rosettes pinned to their chests. They joined the crowds at the back of the rally and waited as the suffrage societies assembled. Neither Evelyn nor Teddy had seen a big rally before. Evelyn had never even seen a picture of one. She was astonished by the scale of the thing. There must have been hundreds – maybe even thousands – of women. Men too. Every suffrage society in London seemed to be there.

  Those women who had been to prison marched together in a guard of honour. Evelyn thought how strange the world was. At home, a woman who’d been to prison was a dangerous, unwomanly creature. But for these women at least, she was a heroine. Evelyn was aware of the two ideologies sitting alongside each other in her head; the nice young girl from Hampstead who wanted to be respected, and the rebel woman who wanted to bring down the pillars of the world. Could one be two such different people at the same time? she thought, and then, Was anybody ever not? Was there anybody who was only ever one sort of person, all the time? And if there were, would such a person be admirable, or dangerous? When at last they set off, these thoughts were still chasing each other around her head.

  She had expected trouble from Teddy, but Teddy, as though in illustration of this principle, was at his most affable and charming, marching alongside nice Miss Plom, a socialist schoolmistress.

  ‘I do think it’s unfair,�
� she was saying, ‘the way some people have everything and others have nothing. If people could just be persuaded to share, the world would be such a nicer place, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Oh, rather!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘All those ghastly aristocrats, bathing in champagne. Shocking fellows. Guillotine the lot of them, I say!’

  Evelyn came up to him and put her arm through his.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ she whispered. He waggled his eyebrows at her.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we ought to be here, but you clearly do, so here I am. And since we are here, you can’t grudge a fellow a bit of fun, can you? Don’t look now, but there’s a terribly keen-looking female trying to catch your attention.’

  A girl in the group behind the Hampstead women was waving at her. Evelyn was just beginning to wonder why it was she looked vaguely familiar when the girl came running up.

  ‘Hullo!’ she said. Evelyn looked at her blankly. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ she said. ‘I sold you a copy of Votes for Women and then some scab chucked a chestnut at you – remember? And now here you are!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Evelyn. ‘Oh – yes …’

  ‘May,’ said the girl. Evelyn introduced herself, and Teddy, who shook May’s hand enthusiastically. The fresh air, the people, and the singing seemed to have put him in high spirits. ‘Ripping day for a spot of criminal violence, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, we don’t want any violence …’ May began, and Teddy laughed, kissed her hand, and said he would expect nothing less.

  Evelyn, watching her, wondered if there was more than one May? Did she have a secret life of her own? Evelyn couldn’t quite picture it.