by Jane Feather
Fenella waved a hand in acknowledgment and pushed her way through the crowd to where her friends stood.
“Have a poster.” Diana thrust one into her hands. “We’re going to start in a few minutes and hope everyone will somehow fall in after us in some orderly form.”
“There’s so many of us,” Petra said in awe. “No one can ignore a protest this big.”
“We’ll just make sure they don’t.” Christabel Pankhurst appeared beside her mother, Emmeline, a militant gleam in her eye. “I intend to knock a few helmets off if any policeman tries to stop me.”
“That’ll get you convicted of assaulting an officer of the law,” Fenella pointed out. “A bit extreme, don’t you think?”
“If we’re going to fight this fight we have to use every tool at our disposal,” Christabel declared. “Either you believe in it or you don’t. There’s no point in half measures.”
“I think we should try to be as peaceful as possible, my dear,” Emmeline said, trying as always to persuade her daughter to keep her more extreme inclinations in check. “Violence doesn’t really achieve much.”
“Sometimes it’s a last resort,” Christabel stated. “Let’s get started.” She raised her poster high above her head, gestured with her free hand to the group around her and set off toward Westminster. Gradually the throng fell in behind them and the mass of women processed to the Houses of Parliament, chanting and singing, drawing a crowd of spectators as they went.
A small police force was assembled in Parliament Square. The WSPU had marched peacefully many times to the doors of Parliament and presented several petitions at St. Stephen’s door, all of which had been refused by the sergeant at arms, and there was no reason to assume this protest would be any different. Until Emmeline and Christabel hammered on St. Stephen’s door and as soon as it was opened pushed forward, brandishing their posters, the crowd surging behind them in a tidal wave of chanting women that drove back the sergeant at arms and his own small group of parliamentary officers.
The crowd of women poured into St. Stephen’s Hall, with sheer force of numbers pushing through the men trying to form a barricade. From there they stormed the Central Lobby, which stood midway between the Commons and the Lords at the heart of the Houses of Parliament. They stood on chairs and benches, waving the banners, shouting their demands for “Freedom” and “Votes For Women”.
Petra lost sight of Diana and Fenella in the crush. She was concentrating on keeping her own footing in the melee even as she struggled to keep her poster aloft. There were more policemen now and they were seizing women, hauling them off chairs, carrying them toward the open doors, almost throwing them out into the square.
* * *
Guy was sitting in the salon of the House of Lords, drinking coffee and reading the Times, when he noticed a stirring of the generally peaceful, almost sacrosanct air of the paneled room. A footman hurried in and murmured something to the barman, who murmured something to the Duke of Mortby, sitting at the bar nursing a glass. The duke sat up abruptly, turned on his stool, saw Guy and came over.
“Granville, heard the commotion?”
“What commotion?”
“Something in Central Lobby. Women all over, I gather, shouting and makin’ nuisances of themselves. Positive disgrace. Police involved and all sorts.”
Guy closed his eyes briefly on a wave of frustration. How had Freddie got it so wrong? Why had he himself been so complacent as to let this happen? He’d been warned and he could have wrung the truth out of Petra. Now he had no doubts at all that his wife was somewhere in the commotion in Central Lobby.
With a word of excuse he left the duke and the salon and swiftly made his way along the Peers Corridor to Central Lobby. He could hear the clamor as he hastened down the corridor. Two parliamentary officers stood at the door leading to the lobby. They had the air of men prepared to defend entrance into a castle under siege.
“Let me by,” Guy ordered and one of them opened the door exposing the uproar within. At first Guy stood in the doorway, the officers at his back, trying to make sense of the scene. There were women everywhere, standing on chairs, on plinths with the various statues adorning the space, on the long benches along the walls. The slogan chanting was incessant, the posters now being wielded as weapons against the policemen struggling with the protesters.
Guy finally found his wife in the chaos and for a moment he had the absurd urge to laugh. Petra was standing on a chair, using her poster to fend off a broad-shouldered officer who was attempting to pull her down. She looked, he thought, like a diminutive gladiator fighting off a lion. Then he saw a man holding up a camera pointed at Petra on her chair and he lost all desire to laugh. Swearing under his breath he pushed his way through the seething horde looking for the photographer who seemed to have disappeared into the melee. A member of the gutter press, no doubt. They’d be all over this story and pictures of the protesters would be plastered across the front pages of the evening papers.
He reached Petra still on her chair and still fighting off the officer with her poster. “Excuse me.” He pushed the man aside without ceremony. He leaned forward, caught Petra around the knees and hoisted her over his shoulder.
She dropped the poster with her sudden change of position, and reared up against his shoulder, “Put me down, Guy.” Her demand fell on deaf ears as he shouldered his way back through the crowd. The two officers at the door to the Peers Corridor had remained in the open doorway, staring in dumb astonishment at the scene in front of them. Hastily they moved aside as Guy marched past them with his burden. “Shut the damn door,” he snarled, stalking halfway down the corridor before setting Petra roughly on her feet.
She spun round on him, hazel eyes flashing with outrage. “How dare you, Guy. You have no right to interfere.”
“No right,” he exclaimed. “No right to prevent my wife from making an appalling spectacle of herself, from dragging my name through the gutter press. How dare you expose yourself and my family in such a shameless display.”
“Oh, that’s all you care about,” she threw at him. “Your family, your name? This battle is so much more important than your trivial concerns, Lord Ashton.”
“Trivial concerns.” He stared at her in disbelief, his dark eyes filled with anger, his expression a hard mask. Petra took an involuntary step back. She had wondered what his real anger would be like and it frightened her a little. He didn’t look like himself.
“It’s politics,” she said, trying to stand her ground. “Politics are more important than personal concerns. It’s not right that half the population should essentially belong to the other half and have no say in how their country is run, or how they run their own lives.”
Guy said nothing. He continued to fix her with that same disbelieving fury and in the face of his silence Petra could think of nothing else to say. The noise from beyond the corridor seemed if anything to be growing louder and more out of control. She wondered what was happening to Diana and Fenella.
Guy moved suddenly, taking her arm in a hard grip, still saying nothing as he propelled her down the corridor to the House of Lords’s private entry and out into New Palace Yard, away from the commotion outside the St. Stephen’s entrance. He didn’t loosen his hold until they were inside a hackney, away from the photographers’ cameras and the police, who were loading women into Black Marias in Parliament Square.
Nothing was said on the short drive to Berkeley Square and when they reached the house, Guy jumped down first, held Petra’s arm as she stepped down and kept hold into the house. His expression a grim mask, he didn’t acknowledge a for once startled-looking Babbit and steered his wife to the stairs and up to her own parlor, where he closed the door behind them and finally released his grip.
Petra was disinclined to break the silence and stood by the window, waiting, her gloved hands tucked into her coat pockets, aware of the lingering feel of his fingers on her arm.
Guy threw another log on the fire. He straightened
and stood for a minute with his back to her, his hands braced against the mantel shelf. The silence was almost menacing and Petra found herself holding her breath waiting for him to speak.
Finally he did, turning slowly to face her. “I am so angry, Petra, that I can hardly trust myself to be in the same room with you. At some point I will have to decide how to deal with this but I don’t want to do or say anything I’ll regret, so for the moment it’ll have to wait. Will you give me your word that you will not leave the house again today?”
“Why?”
“You have to ask?”
She considered. No, she didn’t have to ask. But she wanted to know what had happened to her friends and she wanted to stand her ground with her husband as far as she could. “Very well, I’ll stay in the house today, but I intend to write some letters. I assume you have no objections to that?”
“No, of course not. I don’t mind who you write to or who visits, I just ask that you remain inside.”
“As you wish.”
Guy nodded and went to the door. “I’m not going out myself so I’ll be in the library or my office, if you need me.” He left, closing the door softly behind him.
Petra wondered why she would possibly need him in the present state of affairs. He was far too intimidating in this incarnation to engage in a civilized discussion of the issue that she felt so passionately about, and a shouting match wouldn’t do either of them any good.
She sat down at her writing desk to write to Diana and Fenella, wishing she knew whether they’d found themselves in the dock at the Old Bailey for trespass or disorderly conduct, or even assault on a policeman. Quite a few helmets had been knocked off in the affray but she’d been too busy defending herself to see who had been involved. Perhaps they’d slipped away and were now sitting in Fortnum’s wondering where she was.
Tears pricked behind her eyes and she blinked furiously. She hadn’t realized how greatly Guy’s anger would upset her, but she felt strangely unmoored, as if she’d lost an essential support. She stared at the blank sheet of vellum, trying to summon a coherent sentence but she hadn’t got very far when a brisk knock at the door brought Diana and Fenella, agog with their own adventures and anxious to hear their friend’s experiences of the morning.
“What happened to you?” Diana asked, casting aside her coat and striped scarf. “One minute I saw you jumping on a chair and the next I was dodging away from an officer. When I looked again, you’d disappeared.”
“Guy happened,” Petra stated. “He came and carried me away. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I couldn’t do anything to stop him. How did you get out of there unscathed?”
“I ducked out when they were arresting Christabel, she was making such a racket and everyone’s attention was focused on her, she’d already knocked one policeman’s helmet off and was kicking another one as he tried to carry her out to the Black Maria,” Fenella said. “I felt a bit of a coward cutting and running like that, but I thought it better to live to fight another day.”
“Absolutely,” Petra agreed, feeling slightly better herself about her own ignominious departure from the fight. “But now, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Guy is livid and I don’t know what to do with it.” She gave a helpless shrug. “He won’t talk to me because he’s too angry.”
“Oh, my dear, that’s so hard.” Diana was instantly sympathetic.
“Yes, there’s nothing like a good knockdown, drag out fight to clear the air,” Fenella added. “In my experience it’s always better to have things out.”
Petra smiled faintly. What worked for Edward and Fenella was not for every marriage.
“Let’s go to Covent Garden for a late lunch. I’m famished,” Diana said. “I was too nervous to eat breakfast and it’s already two o’clock.”
“You two go. I can’t,” Petra said. “Guy asked me to stay inside and I said I would.”
“He’s keeping you a prisoner?” Fenella asked, shocked.
“No, not in the least.” Petra shook her head. “He asked a favor and I agreed. He’s not going anywhere either. I think we have to stay under the same roof until we can come to some kind of resolution. Does that make sense?”
“If it makes sense to you, darling, that’s all that matters,” Diana stated. “We can stay with you if it’ll help.”
Petra shook her head again. “No, this is just between myself and Guy. You go and find some lunch. I’ll let you know how things work out.”
After they had left she abandoned her writing desk and stood at the window overlooking the garden, winter bare now except for a bright splash of red from a camellia blooming against the rosy brick of the garden wall. She turned as the door opened again and Guy came in.
“Freddie has prepared the invitations for the house party,” he said, dropping the handful of engraved and embossed white cards in a fan on her writing desk. “If you’ll sign them this afternoon they can be hand delivered this evening.”
His expression was neutral, his tone cool and distant. Petra took a breath. She’d had half an idea in the light of the morning’s debacle that Guy would think again about the house party. But, of course, she should have known better. Backing down was not her husband’s way.
“I’ll do them now.” She went over to the desk, dipped her pen in the ink and signed her name on the ten cards. Ten couples was a large party and without exception the guests were all members of the government. Men for whom, for the most part, universal suffrage was anathema. None of their wives to her knowledge had shown any active interest in the Union and Petra could see an excruciatingly uncomfortable weekend ahead.
She handed the cards back to Guy, who stood waiting behind her chair. “What will you do if my presence this morning becomes known?” Her voice was more tentative than she’d hoped it would sound.
“Oh, believe me, my dear Petra, it’s all over town by now,” he said with the same lack of expression. “There are newspapermen lurking outside with cameras already.”
“We could throw a bucket of water over them from the upstairs landing,” Petra suggested, realizing too late how totally inappropriate an attempt at humor was in present circumstances.
Guy looked at her in disbelief. “Are you utterly witless? Have you no idea what this means?”
“Yes . . . yes, of course I do. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t joke about it. I’ll keep away from the street and any cameras until this all blows over.” She hesitated, then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry this makes things awkward for you, Guy, but I’m not giving up the Union.”
“You are my wife and I can do little to change that,” he said coldly. “But don’t expect any support or acknowledgment from me, public or otherwise. That’s all I have to say at the moment.” He slipped the signed cards into his coat pocket and left the parlor.
Petra swallowed a knot of tears. Did he mean that he would change the fact of their marriage if he could? It seemed to be what he’d meant. Was that his last word? There was to be no resolution, just this yawning gap between them? Somehow she had to go on as normal, maintaining her public position as Lady Ashton while pursuing her private political passions at the same time without her husband’s even tacit support. She didn’t see how she could do that and have a marriage in anything but name.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“How are things now with Guy, Petra?” Jonathan asked his sister as they settled into a first-class carriage in the train to Bristol a week later.
“Chilly,” she responded, taking a corner seat.
“I don’t suppose he enjoyed seeing his wife’s picture splashed across the front page of the Times.” He put his attaché case onto the overhead shelf. “That was sheer bad luck, considering that Diana and Fenella managed to stay incognito.”
“And it wouldn’t have mattered with them, anyway,” Petra said bitterly. “Their husbands support the Union and wouldn’t be seriously put out.”
“They’re also not members of Parliament,” Jonathan pointed out, taking the corner s
eat opposite his sister. “You must admit their situation is rather different.”
“Perhaps, but the issue of suffrage is more like a matter of conscience, it should rise above mundane concerns like dignity and family name,” Petra declared with a return of her customary energetic passion. “It’s such a noble and vital cause. If men of power like Guy supported the cause then it wouldn’t be necessary to protest in the way we are. If Asquith becomes prime minister in a Liberal government shouldn’t we expect some movement toward suffrage reform? You’d support it, wouldn’t you?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question.
“Yes, I would, and I do,” Joth said with a sigh. “But I don’t like the Union’s methods of persuasion.”
“They’re the only ones left to us,” Petra stated. She stared out of the window at the passing countryside, neatly fenced fields, cattle grouped under clumps of trees, the silver thread of a river. It was all so peaceful on the surface. She sat up straighter and said firmly, “Let’s not talk about this anymore. Why aren’t you staying at Ashton Court for the weekend?”
“Because it’s time some member of the family showed their faces on our own estate,” Joth said. “And I can ride over from Rutherford Court every morning and back again after dinner. I can’t miss any of the political discussions.”
“No,” Petra agreed. By including her brother, a very junior member of Parliament, in every aspect of the weekend, Guy had been doing him a great favor. His presence would make him more noticeable to the men at the top of government, those who really ran the country.
“I’d like to stay on the spot, of course,” Joth went on. “But I have duty to the family as well. Ma and Pa haven’t been near the house since your wedding. I’ve been trying to persuade them to celebrate Christmas there at least, give the tenants the usual party, have the tree for the village, all the old traditions. But I don’t know if they will.”
“You, my dear, need to find a wife,” his sister stated. “Then you can put Rutherford House to its proper purpose. Fill it with children, celebrate every major holiday, revive the Christmas pageant, a proper Boxing Day. The tenants and villagers would be in seventh heaven.”