by Emma Carroll
“He was the art master at the school where I taught,” she says. “Knowing him – loving him – it was one of the greatest joys of my life. He asked me to marry him, and I wanted more than I’ve ever wanted anything to say yes. But it was impossible. A married woman can’t be a teacher. And he had two little orphan brothers of his own to raise and educate. We could just about manage on two wages. But on one! It was impossible!”
“Oh, my dear,” says Mummy. She seems to think that’s the end of the story. But it can’t be.
Why didn’t they wait? They could have waited, surely?
“But when your mother and sister died,” I burst out. “When his little brothers grew up…?”
“I couldn’t have asked him to wait that long,” Miss Norcote says simply. “It would have been years – a decade or more. He deserved more happiness than the sort of hole-and-corner romance I could have given him. I could bear my own unhappiness, but not his – never his! I told him he should forget me. He tried to argue, but in the end he did. He married a very nice girl. They had a family of their own, and I believe they were very happy.”
We’re quiet, looking out over the valley. Poor, poor Miss Norcote! Even Enid is silent.
Then Cook says, “Aye, the world is cruel hard on women. It’s bitter cruel on mothers too. Take my other sister Susan, now. She were married to a terrible wicked fellow. Spent all the bairns’ money on drink, and then came home and beat them black and blue when the devil was in him. At last, Susan ran away, and she took the bairns with her and set herself up as a seamstress. Doing very well she was too, till her husband found out where they were. And then what do you think he did? Only took the bairns away, and gave them to his sister to raise! Said he’s quite within his rights as their father, as she’s the one ’as left him, and she’s never to see them again!”
“No!” I say, shocked.
“Oh yes,” says Cook. “Susan were beside herself, but the policeman said there were nothing to be done, since it were her what left him.”
I can’t believe it.
“Mummy, that isn’t true? Is it?”
“Yes,” says Mummy. She sounds sad. “Under English law, Susan’s husband did nothing wrong. The mother has no rights to her children at all.”
“But he can’t stop her seeing them forever,” says Enid. There are tears forming in the corner of her eyes. Mummy and Miss Norcote glance at each other, and I can see what Mummy’s thinking: she shouldn’t have let Cook say those things in front of Enid.
“No, of course he can’t,” I say hurriedly. Once Enid gets upset, it takes her hours to calm down. “Don’t be such a goose.”
“She isn’t being a goose,” says Mummy. She turns and looks Enid straight in the eye, and there’s something in the way she says the words that silences us. “It’s a great injustice. It’s an attack on a woman’s very status as a human being. You’re quite right to be upset, and Jean, you’re quite right to be angry. But I’ll tell you something.” She takes Enid’s chin in her hand and looks her in the eye. “Women everywhere are fighting this. We’re coming together, and we’re kicking, and we’re shouting, and we’re marching, and we’re speaking, and we won’t be silenced. And we will win. It might not be this year, and it might not be next, but it’ll be soon. And when we win the right to be treated as citizens of this nation, we’ll use our votes to fight all those battles that need winning. We’ll make sure that children can’t be taken from their mothers without due cause, and we’ll make sure women get paid a fair wage for their work, and we’ll fight until every town and village in England has lady doctors and lady lawyers and lady engineers and—”
“Lady train drivers,” says Enid, and she giggles a little as she says it, so I know she’s all right.
“And lady train drivers,” says Mummy. “But if we want those things, it’s women like us who’ll have to do the fighting. These battles – they’ll be won by ordinary people like you and me and Jean and Miss Norcote and Cook. What we’re doing tonight is fighting for those children, Enid. Don’t you ever forget it. And don’t you ever give up.”
“I won’t!” says Enid. “I swear it!” She wipes her face with the back of her hand, and I’m surprised by how serious she sounds. My little sister Enid in her grubby pinafore and scuffed shoes and green hair ribbons. It’s funny to think of Enid as a suffragette, fighting injustice, changing the world.
But why not?
Mummy’s right. That’s what we’re doing, tonight.
After Mummy’s speech, Cook says she thinks it’s time to turn in, and Miss Norcote agrees, rather hurriedly, as though she’s regretting telling us all those private things about herself. We say our goodnights and they disappear to go to the lavatory and off to the boys’ tent, and then it’s just the three of us, Mummy and Enid and me.
“Sure you don’t want to go to bed, girls?” says Mummy.
“No fear!” I say, and Enid agrees.
I want to talk about Cook, and Miss Norcote, and all the things they told us, but their tent is pitched right beside us and I’m worried they’ll hear. Anyway, Mummy starts talking very briskly, as though she knows what I’m thinking and doesn’t think it’s quite the thing. Instead, she starts telling us all about the suffragettes in London, Mrs Fawcett and Mrs Pankhurst, and about marvellous women like Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole, who looked after the poor soldiers in the Crimean War, and Mary Somerville, who studied complicated mathematics in secret and grew up to be one of the finest mathematicians of the age.
“Somerville College in Oxford is named for her,” says Mummy. “I always rather hoped one of you girls, perhaps…”
“Me?” says Enid, astonished. “Not likely!”
“Well, Jean maybe,” says Mummy. But I say I’d rather be a nurse on a front line somewhere and sew up men whose insides have been blown apart.
Mummy says, “You could be a doctor, like Dr Garrett Anderson,” and I just stare, because I know there are lady doctors, but I never, never, never would have thought that one of them might be me.
Mummy laughs and says, “Shut your mouth before you swallow a fly. Whyever not? I simply longed to be a doctor when I was your age.”
“Did you?” says Enid.
“I did,” said Mummy. “You know Uncle James couldn’t go to school because of his asthma. Grandfather didn’t see why he should send me to school either, when he had a tutor right there in the house for James. So we used to do lessons together. I learned all sort of things girls aren’t usually taught, like Latin and Greek and biology and chemistry. I thought perhaps I could be a doctor like Grandfather was.”
My hat! I think. I never knew that about Mummy.
“Why didn’t you?” I say, and her face tightens. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was angry. There’s a strained edge to her voice.
“Oh,” she says. “Grandfather wouldn’t think of it. He thought lady doctors weren’t … respectable, I suppose. He wanted me to get married and have a family.”
“Oh, Mummy, how perfectly horrid!” I say. “Why didn’t you run away and be a doctor anyway? That’s what I would have done.”
“But how?” says Mummy. “It costs an awful lot of money to go to university. If Grandfather wouldn’t pay, how could I possibly afford it?”
I suppose she couldn’t. I’m rather shaken. I always thought Mummy was happy. I mean, I know her life is rather dull – nothing to being a nurse on a front line, or an explorer like Cecil is going to be, or a train driver like Nicholas. But I thought she must like it well enough. Perhaps she doesn’t. Perhaps she’d rather have been living another sort of life entirely.
Some of this must show in my face, because Mummy says, “Oh, darling! Don’t look like that! It was ever such a long time ago. Why! If I’d been a doctor, I might never have married Daddy and had you children. And then where would I be?”
Enid looks comforted, but I’m not sure I am.
Given the choice between Daddy and Cecil and Enid and Nicholas and me, or
this other life she might have been living…
Which would she have picked?
We sit quietly together for what feels like a long, long time, just watching the flames and thinking. My head is so full of new things to think about. I’m not at all sure I like it.
“Mummy,” I say.
And Mummy says, “Yes, darling?”
“I do love you,” I say.
And Mummy says, “I know, my love. And I love you too. I’m sorry about such a lot of things that have happened to me, but I’ve never been sorry about you children.”
Enid says, “Mm-hmm,” like she knew that already. She rests her head against Mummy’s arm and closes her eyes. She’s going to sleep. I’m not going to sleep though. I’m going to stay up all night with Mummy and watch the new day come in.
I’m just going to rest my eyes for a bit, that’s all.
I don’t know how long I sleep for, but the next thing I know Mummy is shaking me gently, saying, “Jean… Enid… Wake up, darlings, look…” And I sit up and look, and the whole sky is this marvellous pinky-orangey-peachy colour, and it’s full of all these little clouds in morning colours. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. And it’s the sunrise, and it’s April the third, and we’ve done it. We’ve swizzed the census.
Enid and I lean against Mummy, and she puts her arms around us, and we sit together under our blankets and watch as the sun comes up.
“I say,” says Enid. “Do you think, next census, we’ll have votes for women? When is the next census?”
“Nineteen twenty-one,” says Mummy. It does sound ever such a long time away. What a lot of things might happen between now and then! Whatever will I be doing? I’ll be twenty-one. Enid’ll be eighteen. Cecil, poor fellow, will be twenty-three! A proper grown-up. “And yes,” Mummy says. “I’m certain of it.”
Enid gives a small, happy sigh. I put my head on Mummy’s shoulder and watch the curls of smoke beginning to rise from the waking houses, and I wonder if she’s right.
Sofia’s sigh misted up the car window as they drove down Brackenberry Road. She’d been hoping it would be a leafy dell or a forest glade, beside a river, with willow trees. She’d imagined number seven to be a thatched cottage, with foxgloves and hollyhocks, but Brackenberry Road was an ordinary street lined with ordinary houses, red-brick boxes topped with charcoal slate. The removal lorry farted grey smoke as it came to a halt outside an unremarkable house with the number seven on the door.
Sofia’s mum parked the car behind the lorry and looked across at her from the driving seat.
“Wait till you see your new bedroom, Sofia,” she said, her voice dancing with excitement. “You’re going to love it here.”
Sofia nodded, but she was doubtful. Saying goodbye to Jess, her best friend, knowing she wouldn’t see her every day, had hurt. She’d cried for the first part of the car journey, until she’d run out of tears. She didn’t want to move house, but Mum had got a new job and now everything had to change.
“I have to make sure the removal people put the boxes in the right rooms.” Her mum pulled the keys from the ignition, dropping them into her handbag. “Why don’t you explore the garden?”
“OK.” Unclipping her seat belt, Sofia clambered out of the car. She was dressed for the outdoors, having got up early to take a last walk down the wildlife trail beside her old house and say goodbye to the forest den she and Jess had built from fallen branches and ferns. She was wearing her purple wellies with rainbow socks pulled up past her knees, a pink T-shirt covered in stars, and a pair of shorts that had once been jeans but had the legs cut off when Sofia had ripped them at the knees sliding down a muddy bank. She grabbed her blue hoodie and bug bag, pulling them both over her head as she walked towards the house.
Maybe the garden is overgrown and wild, with a pond full of frogspawn and newts, she thought. There might be dragonflies.
A woman in overalls was lowering a ramp at the back of the removal lorry. Two men inside the lorry were pushing boxes towards it. The door of number seven was already open. Sofia walked into the house, peering into the empty rooms. A staircase invited her upwards to see her new bedroom, but she ignored it, marching through the kitchen and out into a utility room where she found the back door. A silver key poked out of the lock.
This house may be horrid, she thought, but the garden could be good.
Sofia had dreamed of having a hidden, overgrown bit of earth to bring to life, ever since reading The Secret Garden. She turned the key and yanked the back door open.
A patio of concrete slabs led out to a long rectangle of perfectly mown grass. At the end of the garden, in the left-hand corner, was a neat-looking shed. Her curiosity dwindled as she approached it. The window in the door revealed that the shed was empty. There were three conifer trees at the bottom of the garden, their branches too dense with foliage for climbing. Sofia felt flat as she looked at the uninspiring garden, and a fire of anger tore through her chest.
“Urgh! I hate it here,” she said to herself, kicking the trunk of the nearest conifer. “There aren’t even any fruit trees!”
She watched as sticky sap oozed from the torn bark where her boot had struck the tree. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”
She leaned her head against the bark, breathing in the grassy-pine perfume of the wounded conifer. Her sore heart was throbbing like a thumb hit by a hammer. She wanted to go home. A tear ran down her cheek, but she wiped it away. She’d promised her mum she wouldn’t cry any more.
A trail of determined ants, marching up the trunk of the injured tree, stopped to examine the freshly bled sap.
“Hello.” Sophie brought her face close. “You’re busy, aren’t you?” Rummaging around in her bug bag, she pulled out a portable magnifying glass and slipped it out of its worn leather case. She crouched down and examined the army of ants.
Maybe now we’ve moved, she thought, Mum will let me build an ant farm.
With her head against the tree trunk she could see the fence at the back of the garden and there, tucked behind the empty shed, was a tall, thin gate.
“Oh!” She ducked under a low branch and wriggled through to the gap behind the shed. The gate was hidden from the rest of the garden. She drew back the bolt, but the door was swollen stuck. A couple of good shoves popped it open, and Sofia stepped out on to a footpath that ran along the back of the houses. It was wide enough to ride a bike down. On the opposite side of the footpath was a hedgerow, thick with nettles and brambles, and beyond it, a field of wheat.
“Blackberries!” Sofia stepped forward and picked one, popping it into her mouth, savouring the sour sweetness as it burst on her tongue. She walked along the hedgerow, picking and eating berries, until she noticed three caterpillars on nettle leaves close to the ground. She squatted down and peered at them through her magnifying glass. The caterpillars were nearly three centimetres long, dark with pale-tipped spines and a lemon pattern of marks along their bodies.
“Vanessa atalanta,” she whispered to herself, opening her bag and pulling out a clear plastic pot with tiny air holes in the lid. Grasping the nettle leaf firmly with thumb and forefinger, to avoid being stung, she plucked the leaf hosting one of the caterpillars and carefully slid it into her pot.
Hearing a rustle, Sofia looked to her right. There was a girl, way up the path. She was standing feet apart, staring at Sofia, her eyes enlarged by thick glasses. She was wearing fluffy monster-feet slippers and a faded yellow adult-sized T-shirt as a dress with a belt pulling it in at the waist. In one hand she clutched a pad of paper, and in the other, a pencil case. Her long blonde hair looked like it hadn't been brushed in months.
Sofia lifted her hand and waved, but the girl turned and ran away.
“What are you doing?”
Sofia jumped, not expecting to hear a voice so close behind her. She spun round. Peering over the fence, a shrub of red curly hair sat atop two bright-blue eyes and a freckle-smattered nose.
“I’
m bug hunting,” Sofia replied, holding up her plastic pot. “This is the red admiral caterpillar. It’s in its fifth instar, which means it’s going to pupate soon and turn into a butterfly.”
“Bug hunting?” With a scuffle and a thump, the red-haired girl was over the fence and crouching down beside her. “What are you hunting them for? Do you kill them?”
“No!” Sofia said. “That would be cruel.”
“When people hunt animals they normally do kill them,” the red-haired girl replied, staring down at the caterpillar in the pot. “They shoot them and chop off their heads, stuff them and hang them on the wall.” She giggled. “Imagine hanging a dead caterpillar head on the wall.”
Sofia frowned. She didn’t like that idea.
“I live at number thirteen.” The girl pointed at the house beyond the fence. “You’re the new girl at number seven, aren’t you?” She looked proud, as if she’d solved a mystery. “I saw you arrive.”
“My name’s Sofia.”
“Hi, Sofia. I’m Cassidy.” She pointed at the spiny caterpillar in the pot. “If you don’t kill the bugs, what do you do with them?”
“Well, this one I was going to take back to my terrarium and watch it weave leaves together with silk, to make a cocoon. Then hopefully it will become a pupa and I’ll see it transform into a butterfly.” Sofia smiled, but Cassidy’s expression was confused. “Other bugs I pick up and let them walk on me while I look at them with my magnifying glass.” She slid the lens out for Cassidy to see. “You can see every detail, their compound eyes and hairy bodies.”
“And then what?”
“I let them go.” Sofia carefully put a lid on the pot containing the caterpillar and lowered it into her bug bag.
“Do you do it with all bugs?” Cassidy’s face twisted. “Even spiders?”
“Oh yes,” Sofia replied. “I love spiders. They’re so beautiful.”
“You let spiders crawl on you?” Cassidy stared at Sofia, aghast. “That’s weird.”
“No it isn’t. It’s natural.”