Make More Noise!

by Emma Carroll

  There’d been an awful to-do about it, of course. Ma was upset: she said factory work wasn’t respectable, that the factory-girls were rough and wild. Da shook his head and talked gravely about the tough work and the long hours and the accidents that could happen. But Ada didn’t give a farthing for any of it. Just like always, she had to do it her own way – no matter how much trouble she gave. It’s selfish, Eveline thinks. She’d never want to upset Ma and Da like that.

  The mistress’s bell shrills; it’s time for tea. Quickly, Eveline spoons the tea leaves into the pot the way she’s been taught: one for the mistress, one for the visitor and one for the pot. She pours in the water; the lid clinks into place. Then the pot goes on to the tray and she’s out of the kitchen and up the stairs, quick sticks, because once she’s rung the bell the mistress doesn’t like to be kept waiting. But Eveline is careful too: she’s still haunted by the memory of the day she took a spill on the stairs and smashed the mistress’s favourite vase. She’d cut her hand so badly it bled all over her apron and she’d had to soak it in vinegar to get the stains out. It didn’t half hurt, but worse than that, the mistress had scolded her for a full ten minutes and taken the cost of the vase out of her pay packet. She’d been short for a month until it was all paid back, and she’d been that ashamed when she’d handed her money over to Ma at the end of the week. With Da laid off sick, she knows that every penny counts.

  Now Eveline tries to keep her hands steady as she carries the heavy tray, laden with teapot and cups, scones and sugar, milk and jam. As she comes into the drawing room, she knows she mustn’t bang the door or rattle the tray, because a good maid is always quiet – low-voiced, soft-footed. More like a ghost than a girl.

  The room is warm, a good fire crackling in the hearth, even though it’s only September. The mistress is wearing one of her new frocks, but Eveline sees at once that she can’t hold a candle to her wealthy visitor, Miss Wilcox. If it wasn’t for the fact that maids don’t stare, Eveline wouldn’t be able to keep her eyes off Miss Wilcox’s beautiful embroidered frock, her long string of shining pearls, her wonderful hat with feathers in it.

  “The National Federation of Women’s Workers really have done the most splendid work,” Miss Wilcox is saying. Her voice is rich and deep.

  “Yes, splendid!” the mistress echoes back, all eagerness.

  “And now nineteen Bermondsey factories have given their girls a wage increase…”

  Eveline’s ears prick up. They’re talking about the Bermondsey strikes! Eveline knows all about those, of course. She’s heard about nothing else from Ada since the day the girls walked out of the jam factory.

  “You should have been there, Evvy. You ought to’ve seen it! We all went out together – all shouting and singing through the streets. Not just us, but the girls from the biscuit factory and the chocolate factory and the box-makers too. Some of them had their Sunday best on – all rigged out in feather boas and fur tippets and their best hats. Some had made banners. It was like a party!”

  But Ma had been furious. “A party indeed! A workers’ strike’s not just a bit of fun! What were you thinking? You’re none of you part of a proper union – you won’t get any strike pay. And they’ll likely just give you all the sack! We’re counting on you bringing in your share, Ada.”

  Ada just tossed her head. “I know all that!” she said. “But we’ve got to speak up. We’re workers, not slaves. Some of the girls are only on three shillings a week and working a fourteen-hour day – that’s not right! If the men can strike, then why shouldn’t we? We’ve got to raise our voices – else nothing will ever change.”

  Eveline had gone back to work feeling sick to her stomach. What would they do if Ada lost her job? It wouldn’t be easy for her to find a new one. Money was scarce enough as it was. There were the little ones to think about, and there were doctor’s bills to pay for Da.

  One long week had dragged by, then another, and still the factory-girls were on strike. When Eveline trudged home for her half-day there was nothing for tea but stale bread and a scraping of dripping. Da looked grieved and Ma had begun to talk of taking in shirt-making to make a few extra shillings. Eveline was so angry that she could hardly look at Ada, who sat with her head held high, as though she’d done nothing wrong.

  But at the end of three long weeks, the factory-girls got what they wanted. Ada preened as she put an extra two shillings down on the table for Ma. “See – it was worth it,” she said to Eveline. “Two shillings more a week. We got unions now. Better working conditions. If you want things to change, you’ve got to speak up. You have to fight for what you want.”

  Eveline tries to imagine what would happen if she asked the mistress for two shillings more a week and has to bite her lip to keep a laugh from slipping out. Her hand wobbles and she splashes some tea on to the tray-cloth. The mistress purses up her mouth in disapproval, but she won’t say anything about it now, not in front of Miss Wilcox.

  Steadying herself, Eveline sets the tray down on the little table she polished to a shine that morning. Miss Wilcox smiles at her, and for a moment she’s not sure what to do. Maids are supposed to be invisible, but she doesn’t want to be rude, so she smiles uncertainly back.

  “So this is one of your housemaids?” asks Miss Wilcox.

  The mistress smiles and nods. She doesn’t correct Miss Wilcox. She doesn’t explain that Eveline is not in fact “one of her housemaids”, but instead her one and only maid-of-all-work. She’s happy to let Miss Wilcox think she’s got a whole army of servants below stairs, instead of only Cook and Eveline.

  “What’s your name, dear?”

  “I’m Eveline, ma’am.”

  “And how old are you, Eveline?”

  “Thirteen, ma’am.”

  “Only thirteen? Shouldn’t you still be at school?”

  “Oh no, ma’am. You’re allowed to leave at thirteen, if you’ve got a place.”

  “And did you want to leave school, Eveline, and come out to work? Or would you rather have stayed on?”

  Eveline is foxed. She senses there’s a right answer to this question, but she’s not sure what it is. She can feel the mistress’s eyes fixed on her.

  “N-not really, ma’am,” she says honestly. “I mean, I didn’t want to leave. I liked school. I like learning things. But you can’t keep going, can you, not when you could be earning a wage?”

  Miss Wilcox looks at her for a moment and Eveline can’t help looking back. “You could keep on learning, you know, Eveline, even though you’re working now,” she says. “There are a number of activities we are putting on for young women just like you, to help you continue with your education. There are classes and lectures you might go to. Libraries you could join. All free of charge. I’ll leave some information about them for you.”

  Libraries! It’s a magic word. Libraries are full of books, and Eveline thinks that anything would be bearable – lugging the hot-water can up the stairs in the morning, scrubbing out the chamberpots, even Cook’s worst moods – if she had a book she could read at the end of the day. The thought of it is so overwhelming that it’s all she can do to stammer out, “I’d like that very much, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  As she goes back out into the hall, she can hear the mistress saying, “It’s very good of you to take an interest in Eveline.”

  “It’s important to do what we can to help these girls, to give them opportunities to learn, don’t you agree? There’s a great deal more to our work than campaigning for the vote, of course.”

  “Of course. Would you care for a scone?”

  Back in the kitchen, Eveline knows she ought to be working. There’s sewing she’s meant to be doing for the mistress, but her thread snarls up and she can’t fix her attention on her needle. She keeps thinking about what Miss Wilcox said. Lectures. Classes. Libraries. Books.

  Before she knows it, the mistress’s bell is shrilling again and she jumps up to answer it. Upstairs in the drawing room, Miss Wilcox has gone; the
room seems smaller and darker without her in it. Eveline goes to pick up the tea-tray but her mistress stops her.

  “Come here for a moment, Eveline. I didn’t care for the way you spoke to Miss Wilcox this afternoon. I know she was kind enough to ask you about yourself, but the way you answered her was rather bold and insolent.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” whispers Eveline, looking down at the pattern of carpet she’d brushed that morning. She feels very small. She hadn’t meant to be rude to anyone, and certainly not Miss Wilcox.

  “A maid should always be quiet and respectful, Eveline. It’s important that you remember that.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Eveline can see the printed pamphlets Miss Wilcox has left for her, lying on the polished table beside the tea-tray. The top one has a black-and-white illustration on the cover – it’s that picture again, the angel with the trumpet. She can just make out a word: she thinks it says LIBRARY. The mistress gathers them up in her hand and then turns back to her:

  “You do want to be a good girl, don’t you, Eveline?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Eveline says at once.

  The mistress nods briskly. “Very well then, we’ll say no more about it. Now, clear away the tray.”

  And with that, she quickly tosses the little stack of pamphlets into the fire.

  For a moment, Eveline is frozen still. She can see the library pamphlet burning. The angel is swallowed up by orange flame and then turns to grey ash.

  The mistress looks impatient. “Hurry along, Eveline.” Then, seeing that Eveline is still staring at the fire, she adds, gently enough, “I know Miss Wilcox was good enough to leave those for you, but I’m afraid she doesn’t quite understand the situation. I can hardly let you go gallivanting about London by yourself, to libraries and lecture halls, can I? It wouldn’t be proper! And all it would do is give you ideas above your station, Eveline, and what good is that going to be to you? Besides, when would you get your work done?”

  Eveline stares back at her dumbly. In her head she hears Ada say: if you want things to change, you’ve got to speak up.

  Eveline carries the tea-tray back down to the kitchen – still quiet but for the ticking of the clock. The plates are strewn with crumbs now, the spoons sticky with jam. There’s a smear of butter on the tray-cloth, and the teacups hold the dregs of tea.

  Eveline looks at the tray and thinks for a moment about what it would feel like to throw the whole thing on to the kitchen floor. To see the white-and-green teapot smashed into pieces, tea spilling out everywhere. The sugar bowl shattered. The cups with their angels and trumpets broken to smithereens.

  But Eveline would never do anything like that. Eveline’s a good girl, isn’t she? A hard worker. Steady, reliable. One of the ones you can trust.

  Instead, she places the tray on the table and begins to tidy up. The butter and sugar back in the larder, the jam in the cupboard. She looks at the jam pot for a moment before she puts it away. The label is a cheerful scarlet and yellow, bearing the jaunty words: THE VERY BEST STRAWBERRY JAM. A MOST DELICIOUS PRESERVE! Its boldness makes her think of Ada. She fills the sink for the washing-up, thinking of what Ada would say if she was here now, all the rude names she’d have for the mistress. She’d probably tell Eveline to put those silver teaspoons in her pocket and walk out, right now. The mistress would have to wash her own precious china and make her own tea then, wouldn’t she? That’d show her what was what!

  Ada would say she should chuck it in, and come and work at the jam factory. She always said she’d get Eveline a job there, once she got tired of that silly cap and apron. In that noisy place, no one will ever say she has to be quiet again.

  But the thing is that Eveline rather likes being quiet. She always liked the hush of the schoolroom, the flicker of pages turning, the quiet squeak of a pencil on a slate. She likes the idea of a library, the important silence of all those books, brimming over with stories and ideas.

  She rolls up her sleeves and puts the china into the soapy water. As she does so, she holds up the teacup, contemplating the green and purple design again. Outlined in green, the angel stands on her toes like a dancer, blowing her trumpet. Not just an angel but a herald, a sort of messenger, picked out against the purple background with the letters WSPU. For the first time Eveline notices that the angel is carrying a fluttering banner. Printed on it in tiny letters is the word FREEDOM.

  She knows the library exists now; Miss Wilcox told her about it. She doesn’t need the mistress’s permission, does she? She could find it on her own.

  The teacup angel is calling her onwards. You have to fight for what you want, says Ada in her head. The thought of it is like a peal of trumpets or the smash of china in the basement kitchen, even though Eveline hasn’t made a sound.

  May 20th, 1894

  Spring Street, Boston, USA

  Dear Diary,

  Well, I’ll be danged if I didn’t hear the most preposterous notion today! I was out sellin’ advertising space to make a few cents while my old man, Max, studied at the synagogue, when here’s what I heard tell: those two bigwigs Dr Albert Reed and Colonel Pope, owners of Pope Manufacturing Company, are wagering $20,000 against $10,000 that no woman could travel round the world on a bicycle in one year.

  No woman? Like all us womenfolk are fit for is bakin’, birthin’ and blushin’? This got me so huffy, it set me to thinkin’ about what my dear departed ma said when my brother Bennett chided me for not actin’ ladylike when I was knee-high to a grasshopper: “Annie Cohen,” she said. “Don’t you give a bean what Bennett or any boy thinks. You have more grit and gumption than any gal in Boston already. It will carry you far, Bubbala.”

  It sure will, Ma. I’m gonna get some wheels and go right around the world!

  May 26th

  I put my name down for the wager – I will travel round the world by bicycle, setting off from Chicago in September. Now all I have to do is get some sponsors to give me some gelt for my trip. What in tarnation could possibly go wrong? I’m Yiddish in a city full of Jew-haters, five foot three, married with three kids and here’s the clincher: I have never ridden a bicycle in all my born days. Pshaw! I’m not going to hang up my fiddle over a bitty thing like that. Bennett’s wife, Bertha, says she’ll mind Malkie and Libby and my boy chick, Simon, along with her own little ones. I guess that’s the good thing about two families livin’ under one roof, though there’s no room to swing a cat with five kids frolicking about. I asked if they minded me leaving them for a whole year and Libs threw her bonnet in the air and said, “You go, Ma!” Simon sulked a little. He says old dames can’t cycle no how (I’m 24) and that I’m gonna fall right off my saddle and be sorry, but Malkie pushed his face in the chicken soup and said if she was his ma, she’d ride to the moon and stay there and even that wasn’t far enough to get away from a pea-brain critter like him.

  May 27th

  Oy yoy yoy! I’m dancing round the parlour with the dawg. I just heard that the folk who run the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company have agreed to sponsor little ol’ me. All I have to do is carry a billboard on my back wheel and change my name to Annie Londonderry, and they will give me the almighty sum of $100! I told them I’ll be truly happy to oblige and, man or woman, I’ll be the beatingest rider on the road.

  When he heard about the $100, even Simon changed his tune and said, “Bully for you, Ma!” and “When you win, we’re gonna be the richest folk in the whole world.” Well, I couldn’t promise that, but he flung his arms around me and said he was real proud, and Malkie said that when she was a lady, she’d be a brave she-bear like me, not a stay-home ma who never left the yard. Libby said, “You will come home though, won’t you, Ma? Only Aunt Bertha doesn’t make slapjacks like you do.”

  I’m really gonna miss my chicks, but maybe it’s good for them to learn that women aren’t born with both hands glued to a griddle pan.

  June 7th

  Ain’t I the biggest toad in the puddle! Today I took delivery of a real shiny
42-pound Columbia women’s bike. It’s sittin’ in the yard right now under the washing.

  I’ve been practising riding down the lane. Those handle bars sure do have a mind of their own, and my petticoat got caught in the spokes and darn near hurled me over the fence.

  Reckon I need to rethink my wardrobe. I’d hate to scandalise the neighbourhood by showin’ my ankles so I’ll ride out in my long skirt, corset and high collar, and pack some gentlemen clothin’ in my saddlebag for later. I have heard tell that a Mr E.C. Pfeiffer pedalled round the globe earlier this year but turned out that was all gum and hogwash. Danged if I know why he didn’t make it. Him being a man and all, it wasn’t like he was hampered by his petticoat tails. I’m gonna tuck my pearl-handled pistol in my garter and if Mr E.C. Pfeiffer or some other klutz gets in my way, I’m gonna put a bullet through their tyres.

  June 15th

  Went to the photographic studio this afternoon and posed with my new bicycle.

  I figure I could sell pictures of myself to help fund my trip along the way, and maybe autographs and promotional pins. Old Ma Riley was watchin’ me through the window and when I came out she looked me up and down said, “You think you’re really something, don’tcha, Annie Kop? Showing everythin’ you’ve got and making a spectacle of yourself in public. Tch!” I just gave her a pitying smile. I guess she’s too old to change her views and thinks the whole wide world ends at Spring Street Cemetery.

  June 18th

  Word is gettin’ around about my venture. I’m the talk of the town and while many want to see me fail, seems like plenty don’t. I now have more sponsors: the American Ever-Ready folk, who make batteries, the Durham Smokin’ Tobacco Company, Lever Brothers, who make Sunlight Soap, and Blocki Perfume. I have so many metal trade signs hangin’ off my bike and around my person, when I set off I’m gonna sound like a knight in armour sliding down the stairs on a tin tray.