Things a Bright Girl Can Do

by Sally Nicholls

  May had promised. And although she hadn’t managed to get very far with Carpenter, what she had read had charmed her. A whole separate species of people, who weren’t quite men and weren’t quite women! It was like discovering you were a changeling, or a princess raised by swineherds. And then May’s mother – very casually indeed – had pointed out women amongst the suffragists who were part of this secret tribe, and that was even better.

  Nell had always hated being different.

  But May revelled in it.

  Home

  EVELYN LAY ON her side on the narrow bed. She curled up into a ball and pulled the blanket over her shoulders, but she was still cold. The cell shouldn’t be this cold in July, should it? She couldn’t stop shivering. It was like panicking, this shivering. She curled herself tighter together and put her hands under her armpits. When she tried to sit up, her head ached and she was dizzy, so then she didn’t try it any more. But she was so thirsty. How long did it take someone to die of thirst? How long had she been in prison? It made her head ache to try and calculate it, but it must be days now. Three days? Four, five? Could it be as long as a week? It couldn’t be, could it?

  The ache at the small of her back was worse. It hurt more when she tried to move. She felt like an old woman. Could hunger striking give you rheumatics? Why had no one ever told her it felt like this?

  She pushed herself up. There was a ringing in her ears and then the room was swinging around her in giddy, drunken sweeps. She tried to stand, and found herself on the floor. She tried to sit and found that she couldn’t, so she stayed where she was. Everything was ghastly. Everything hurt.

  How much longer could this last?

  ‘You’re going home,’ said the wardress. ‘Home. You’re going home.’

  She opened her eyes, slowly. The wardress was leaning over her bed, peering into her face as though curious to see if she might have died, or slipped into unconsciousness. Evelyn was horribly afraid she was thinking about slapping her. She was a big, broad woman, with big white hands, and when she saw that Evelyn was awake, she pulled back and said, not unkindly, ‘Here, won’t you drink something?’

  And she gave Evelyn a mug of water. Evelyn took it in both hands. They felt clumsy and painful and stiff, as though they had forgotten how to be hands. She gripped the mug as tightly as she could. If she dropped it, she thought she would cry. She felt very close to tears. Her ears were ringing so loudly she thought she might faint. She couldn’t faint, with cold water in her hands.

  The water tasted like nothing earthly. It had its own flavour, subtle but beautiful. It was cool and delicious and strangely heady, like wine. She drank slowly, savouring every mouthful. She felt that nothing she would ever drink again would ever taste as beautiful as this.

  The woman waited while Evelyn drank, and then gave her a folded piece of paper. Her brain didn’t seem able to take in what it was; the words were blurring and jumping before her eyes. It took several readings before she managed to grasp its meaning. It was a release on licence for seven days. She had been in Holloway without food or water for six nights. In seven days’ time, she would have to come back in to finish the remaining eight days of her sentence. She had a hysterical urge to laugh. She had managed to persuade them to release her; for what? In seven days’ time, the whole obscene charade would begin again. She thought of Mrs Pankhurst, serving a three-year sentence in six-day chunks, and felt a new respect for her. How could she possibly find the courage to do this again and again and again?

  Two wardresses took her into a taxi-cab and gave her address to the driver. Evelyn leant back against the seat and closed her eyes. The cab was cold, and her spring coat was light; she was shivering. Why weren’t the wardresses cold? Was it because of the hunger strike? Or was she getting ill? She thought she might be getting ill. She thought she had never felt so tired in all of her life.

  The taxi turned into Evelyn’s road, and stopped before her house. It felt very strange to see home still standing there, looking just as it had when she’d left. Had it really only been seven days since she’d seen it?

  One of the wardresses sat in the taxi with Evelyn, while the other went up to the door and rang the bell. After what felt like an age, the maid, Iris, answered. She spoke to the wardress, then peered out of the door at Evelyn sitting there in the back of the cab in her spring coat, shivering like it was midwinter. She disappeared into the house. Whatever was she doing? Then Evelyn’s mother appeared in the doorway and ran down the garden path and opened the door to the cab.

  ‘Oh, Evelyn!’ she said, and Evelyn was astonished to see that she was crying. Her brisk, sensible mother, crying in the street!

  They were in the hallway, and Hetty was at the bottom of the stairs, staring, and her mother was shouting for help. There were the stairs, which were so hard to climb that they made her sob in pain, and her mother and Miss Perring had to half carry her up them. There was a bed in a warm room, with a fire in the grate, and light so bright that it hurt her eyes coming through the window. The Collis children only had fires in their bedrooms when they were ill. So perhaps I really am ill, thought Evelyn.

  There was a doctor with an old-fashioned black Victorian doctor’s bag, who talked in corners with Mother. What are you saying? Evelyn cried, but the words wouldn’t come out properly. I’m quite all right, she wanted to say. I’m not ill at all. I’m just tired. But nobody seemed to hear.

  Mother was trying to make her drink a cup of milk. It felt absurdly, luxuriously rich, like drinking cream. She could only manage half a cup before she began to cough, and then she was crying, because she felt so sick and tired. Her hands looked impossible, like old women’s hands, or the hands of corpses. They had been very pale and slender when she’d come out of prison – frighteningly so – but now that she’d begun to drink again, they’d gone scarlet. They hurt so much that she cried aloud when Mother tried to give her the cup of milk, and Mother had to hold it for her. Her whole body hurt.

  The doctor was taking her temperature. I don’t have a temperature, Evelyn wanted to say. I’m just tired because of the thirst strike. But he carried on taking it anyway. Evelyn’s head still hurt too much to argue. And I’ve got to go back there! she remembered suddenly.

  ‘Don’t make me go back!’ she cried aloud. ‘Don’t make me!’ And she struggled to sit up, and the room blurred, and hands were pushing her down again, but she cried aloud, ‘I can’t go back there! I can’t!’

  It was later, and everything was dark, and there was a pain in her stomach that hadn’t been there before, and she was shivering very hard, so she must have a fever, and when she tried to lift her head, the room began swimming around her, and nothing felt right.

  Teddy, she thought, and then, Oh, God, Teddy was right. I’ve done something dreadful to myself and now I’m going to die. She felt the panic rising inside her. She couldn’t die! Not yet. She hadn’t meant to make herself as ill as all this. Surely there was some way to take it back?

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she cried, but she wasn’t sure if the words came out. ‘Teddy, I’m so sorry! Teddy, I want you! Teddy!’

  But she was sinking again. The world was fading out of focus. She fought to stay awake, to make them understand, to stop this thing, whatever it was, from overwhelming her, but she couldn’t hold her mind together, she was falling, falling, falling, and everything went to black.

  August

  1914

  In this dread hour when the fate of Europe depends on decisions which women have no power to shape, we, realising our responsibility as mothers of the race, cannot stand passively by. Powerless though we be politically, we call upon the governments of our several countries to avert the threatened and unparalleled disaster. Women see all they most reverence and treasure, the home, the family, the race, subjected to certain damage which they are powerless to avert or assuage. Whatever its result, the conflict will leave mankind the poorer, will set back civilisation, check the amelioration in the condition of the masses on w
hich the welfare of nations depends. We, women of twenty-six countries in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, appeal to you to leave untried no method of conciliation or arbitration which may avert deluging half the civilised world in blood.

  Appeal for mediation sent by the offices of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in London to the Foreign Secretary and Embassies of all countries likely to be involved in a war, July 29th 1914

  Mafeking

  THE WOMEN’S PEACE Movement meeting finished at ten o’clock on the evening of the 3rd of August. Eleven o’clock in Germany. At midnight, German time, unless something miraculous happened, Britain would be at war.

  For years, Europe had been a sort of domino-run of alliances, treaties, grudges and unfought battles. The assassination in Sarajevo had been the fallen domino which had sent the others toppling in every direction with a speed that – to May, whose knowledge of international affairs was limited – was astonishing.

  The day before, Germany had invaded Luxembourg. They had sent an ultimatum to Belgium – with whom Britain was allied – demanding safe passage. If Belgium did not agree to let them pass, they would invade.

  All day, the newspapers had been full of outrage at the thought that Britain might not uphold its ‘moral obligation’ to support ‘plucky little Belgium’. May’s mother, generally, was very much in favour of keeping your word – and of supporting the underdog, which plucky little Belgium definitely was – but there was something rather terrifying about that domino-run. The newspapers talked as though any war would be brief and glorious, but most of May’s mother’s friends were less optimistic. At best, people would be killed. At worst … it didn’t bear thinking about.

  The British government, however, did not share their concern. They, in turn, issued an ultimatum to Germany. Withdraw from Belgium by midnight, or Britain and Germany would be at war.

  The Women’s Peace Movement, naturally enough, had been loud in their condemnation of this decision. Representatives from all sorts of groups were there – suffragists, of course, but also the National Federation of Women Workers, the Women’s Labour League and the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Only Emmeline Pankhurst’s WSPU was absent. The meeting had drawn up a resolution condemning the conflict and demanding that Britain attempt a peaceful reconciliation. A deputation of women were sent to take this to Downing Street. May and her mother stood in the street, listening to the news boys calling the evening papers, full of the day’s speeches in Parliament. It was a hot, heavy evening. Motor cars rattled past. The street was full of suffragists. No one wanted to go home, but nobody quite knew what else to do. On a night like this, the thought of their oven of a house was more than they could bear.

  May’s mother had been talking to some of her friends. She came over to May.

  ‘Some of the NUWSS ladies are going to Whitehall to wait for eleven,’ she said. ‘There’s quite a crowd there, apparently. Would you like to go too? It’ll be a moment in history, I suppose. Like the Relief of Mafeking – do you remember?’

  ‘Mama, you know I don’t,’ said May. ‘I was a baby! But do let’s go. I couldn’t bear just to sit at home and do nothing.’

  ‘I always hoped you’d remember,’ said her mother. ‘But, there! I don’t suppose you’ll ever forget tonight.’

  May supposed she wouldn’t, whatever happened. She wondered where Nell was, if she was waiting for eleven somewhere too. Did Nell want a war, or didn’t she? How strange that she even had to wonder! May had never thought about why she was anti-war, any more than she’d thought about why she was anti-pestilence or anti-famine. They were just obviously bad things, weren’t they? But nobody else seemed to agree. Everyone at school was desperate for a war. Would Nell be too? Her father had been a soldier, after all. And the East End Suffragettes were the breaking-windows, socking-policemen sort. But Nell couldn’t really actually want this.

  Could she?

  There was a small crowd of people in Parliament Square, watching the clock. It was half past ten already. In half an hour it would be midnight in Germany.

  The crowd was mostly quiet. There were no shouts, no cheering, no banner-waving. Mostly people just stood in little groups, whispering to each other. They were the strangest collection of people too. On one side of May were three young men in top hats and tails, who looked like they’d come straight from a supper party, or an evening at the theatre. They were smoking cigarettes and saying very little, but their eyes kept looking back to the clock. On her other side was a gaggle of railway workers, still in uniform. Behind them was a cluster of girls a few years older than May, all in calico summer frocks in bright colours.

  ‘All right?’ said May’s mother. May nodded.

  The hands of Big Ben crept closer to eleven. The tension in the air grew palpable. The people around them quieted. Would something happen? A last-minute change of plan, an eleventh-hour telegraph from Berlin? Surely something must?

  And then the minute hand moved to twelve. The great bongs of Big Ben began to toll. And suddenly the tension broke, and everyone was shouting.

  ‘War is declared! War is declared!’

  People were hooting. They were cheering, and embracing each other. One of the young gentlemen threw his top hat into the air and cried, ‘Whew!’ and laughed.

  ‘We’re going to war! We’re going to war!’ the railway workers were shouting. They kept slapping each other on the back and shaking their heads. Another young gentleman, this one in a grey flannel suit and a boater, hurried over and shook hands with all the suffragists.

  ‘Do beg your pardon,’ he said, rather confusedly. ‘Terribly exciting, eh? A war! Jolly good show, what?’

  And he shook May’s hand for a second time, took off his spectacles, wiped them on his handkerchief, then went off to shake hands with the railway workers, repeating, ‘A war! A real war!’ to himself.

  Suddenly, everyone was talking. These people who a few moments ago had been so quiet and solemn seemed all at once to have a great deal to say, and most of what they seemed to have to say was, ‘War is declared!’

  More people were coming out onto the streets. The press around them was growing. May’s mother – perhaps remembering the riot in Bow – grabbed her hand and said, ‘Come on! Out of the crowd!’ and began to push onto the road. But it was slow-going. The stunned look on people’s faces was being replaced by a sort of giddy hysteria. A group of men outside a pub were singing Rule, Britannia!, very loudly and tunelessly. The young gentleman in the boater and all his friends joined in. Someone somewhere released the cork from a bottle of champagne and sent it spraying over the heads of the crowd to ironical cheers. A girl in a white dress caught up the end of her sash and waved it over her head shouting, ‘Death to the Hun!’

  A car full of young men and women came careening down the street at high speed. The young woman in the driving-seat was honking the horn furiously. The young men in the back seat were whooping. May’s mother glanced at them nervously, and pulled May closer.

  To May, the enthusiasm was baffling. These were the men who would be soldiers. Didn’t they understand what that meant? It felt strange to have come straight from a meeting so concerned with the viscera of war – civilian casualties, economic destruction, loss of nationhood – into a noisy playground celebration. Any one of these young men might be killed. Didn’t any of them care?

  At the other side of the square was a small anti-war demonstration.

  ‘This war does not concern us!’ a man shouted as May and her mother walked past. The demonstrators looked rather out of place amongst the general party atmosphere. But even so, May watched them a little guiltily. It felt so wrong just to be walking around, watching. Like the young woman driving the car, she wanted to do something.

  ‘Should we join in?’ she asked her mother, but her mother shook her head.

  ‘Not today,’ she said. ‘Let’s get home. We’ll have work enough tomorrow.’

  A Telegram

  THE TELEGRAPH BOY came
when Nell’s family was at breakfast. Meals were a complicated business for a family of eight. Nell’s father, Bill and Nell all had to be at work by eight, which meant breakfast by a quarter past seven; bread and margarine for Nell and her mother, bread and dripping for the men, who had a long day of physical work ahead of them. Both Johnnie and the baby had woken too, and wanted feeding. Bernie and Dot were still in bed, but awake. Bernie slept on the sofa in the kitchen, and Dot was woken when the rest of the family left the big double bed.

  The telegraph boy was Tommy Parkin, who had once sat across the schoolroom from Nell and blown spit-balls into her hair. He looked almost unrecognisable in his smart blue uniform, shiny regulation boots, and blue hat. He knocked sharply on the kitchen door – which was open – and announced, ‘Telegram for Mr Swancott!’

  Everyone – even Johnnie – looked at Nell’s father in astonishment. Her father, however, didn’t look that surprised. He seemed, Nell thought, as though he’d been expecting something like this. His face, as he looked at Tommy Parkin, wore an expression almost of dread. He got up laboriously, took the little brown envelope from Tommy, and opened it.

  ‘No reply,’ he said to Tommy, who left.

  ‘Well?’ said Nell’s mother, as soon as he had gone. ‘What is it? Is it bad news?’

  Nell’s father handed her the telegram. Bill and Nell and Bernie scrambled up and over to read it.

  It was very short.

  ‘Mobilise,’ said Nell’s mother. She stared at him in alarm. ‘What does it mean? Eric? Eric?’

  ‘It means we’re at war,’ said Nell’s father, which Nell already knew, because the newspaper boys had been shouting about it all morning, and Mrs O’Farrell had already been up to talk it over with her mother and father. ‘They’re calling up the reserves. It’s back to the army, old girl.’ But he wouldn’t look at her as he said it.