by Lissa Evans
‘And what was that?’ asked Mattie, standing up and waiting for the girl to do likewise. Instead Inez leaned back in her chair.
‘I just wanted to meet you,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I know one of the Amazons from school and she told me that you were a suffragette. And so was my mother.’
‘Really? What was her name?’
‘Venetia Campbell.’
And all the breath seemed to leave Mattie; she gazed at the girl and for a moment she simply couldn’t speak.
‘Did you know her?’ asked Inez.
‘Yes,’ said Mattie, the word emerging as a little flake of sound, like a crust of paint scratched from a wall.
‘She died when I was a baby, you see, so I don’t remember her at all.’
‘I heard, yes … I heard that she’d died.’
‘Did you?’
‘It was not long after the war started. But I didn’t know …’
But she couldn’t possibly say what it was that she didn’t know. ‘I really have to go now,’ she said, glancing at her wristwatch without actually seeing it; she wanted to look at Inez again, and yet could hardly bear to.
‘Oh. Can I talk to you about my mother another time?’
‘Come on Sunday.’
‘To the Amazons?’
‘Yes.’ Mattie felt, for the first time in her life, as if she might faint, the edges of her vision peeling away, the centre shimmering.
‘I thought you said that you wanted me to go away and think about it.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. Please see yourself out.’
She turned her back on the girl, and left the room.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ asked The Flea, standing so hastily that her pen rolled across the table; Mattie’s face was the colour of clay. ‘Are you ill, are you in pain?’
‘No.’
‘But you look dreadful!’
‘I’ve had a shock.’ She gripped the back of a chair, steadying herself.
‘Good God, Mattie, what’s wrong? What’s happened?’
‘Wait.’ She took a couple of deep breaths. ‘Wait.’ She felt dislocated, battered; the past had roared into the present and knocked her down.
‘At least sit down. I’ll pour you some tea.’
The cup shook in Mattie’s hand.
‘That girl,’ she said, ‘the girl you showed into the conservatory. She’s the daughter of Venetia Campbell.’
‘Venetia Campbell!’ The Flea clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘But … but I thought she had a son – a little chap with blond curls, I met him once.’
‘And this child, too. She was only a baby when her mother died.’
‘I remember hearing about the suicide. I think it might have been Aileen who told me,’ said The Flea, ‘but there was no mention of a baby. Of course, no one had seen her for months by that point.’ She shook her head. ‘What’s the girl’s name?’
‘Inez.’
‘Do you think she knows her mother actually stayed in this house?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t … I wasn’t thinking of that.’
Mattie’s expression was unfamiliar to her, an inward gaze, like that of someone struggling to keep their balance.
‘What is it?’ asked The Flea. For it was clear that there was something more to come. Venetia Campbell had been young, and spirited – and married – and after three hunger strikes, her husband had decided she should take no further part in WSPU activities. And in 1914, she had swallowed poison, and died.
‘What is it, Mattie?’ The Flea sat down, so that she could look directly into her friend’s eyes. ‘Please tell me,’ she said.
Mattie lifted her cup and drank its contents in one steady pull, and then set it down with such accidental force that the saucer cracked clean across.
‘How stupidly clumsy of me,’ she said, and then: ‘Angus was her father.’
‘What?’
‘She’s my brother’s child. The second I saw her, before we had exchanged a word, I thought how much she looked like him. The shape of her face, her eyes – the resemblance is very marked. But of course, I would never have thought it anything but a coincidence if she hadn’t told me her mother’s name.’
‘Was there … I mean, did you know that they …?’
‘I believe that they met during one of the Hyde Park assemblies and I know he came to see her later on, when she was recuperating here. I must, I’m afraid, assume they were lovers.’
‘So …’
‘Inez Campbell is my niece. Great God!’ Saying the fact out loud seemed to treble its force – a scion, flesh of her flesh, a hand from the past, reaching out to grasp hers! Before, there had been no one, Stephen dead in one war, Angus in another, all that brilliance, all that spark and charm—
‘What’s she like?’ asked The Flea.
‘Utterly vapid,’ said Mattie, euphoria punctured. ‘As zestless as a marzipan lemon – goodness knows what her upbringing has been like; anti-progressive, I would imagine, any potential clearly untapped. I was, to be frank, on the brink of turning her down for the Amazons.’
‘Intelligent, do you think?’
‘Hard to tell. She wanted to find out more about her mother and I’ve asked her to come back on Sunday.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Angus’s daughter,’ she said, and the phrase was so new, so unlikely, that she stumbled slightly over the words.
‘Do you think that your brother knew?’ asked The Flea, abruptly.
‘I don’t know. I suppose that they may have exchanged letters.’
‘And do you think she …?’ The Flea stopped talking and began to gather the cups.
‘Do I think she killed herself because she heard about Angus’s injury, and realized that he would never be capable of meeting his daughter? Or perhaps because her husband knew that the child was illegitimate?’
‘It’s not my place to speculate.’
‘Oh, nonsense, Florrie, of course you can speculate, you have opinions and a brain. Perhaps I should have speculated myself. If I’d known there was a child, I could have …’
She paused. Could have what? Arrived at Campbell’s door and demanded to inspect his new offspring? Spied on the baby-carriage? Disguised herself as a governess and infiltrated the household? No, if she had known there was a child, she could have done nothing at all.
Florrie, evidently reaching the same conclusion, busied herself at the sink.
‘I’m going for a ramble,’ said Mattie.
It had started to rain, and the Heath was almost empty of people. She walked fast, not stopping as she usually did to check for signs of spring unfurling at the woodland edge, or for the emergence of cygnets from the nest beside the East Pond – in fact, she scarcely looked around at all, using the uphill path as if it were a treadmill. It wasn’t until a green woodpecker called from a clump of grass nearly at her feet and then shot upward like a vivid firework that she realized that she had reached the tumulus. She stopped to catch her breath; the thickly wooded mound acted as a frequent staging-post for Amazon expeditions, and also as a favourite spot for Red Indian stalking. A chosen victim (and Mattie herself had taken this role only last week) would take a random route between the trees, while a team of trackers attempted to follow soundlessly, with the aim of extracting one of the three feathers that the victim had stuck in her hair. There had been a debate as to whether Ida’s brilliant team strategy – deliberate loud blundering from two team members providing distraction for silent robbery from a third – was allowable. ‘Since when have Red Indians had to follow a rule book?’ Avril had asked, pertly.
‘Or thieves,’ Ida had added.
Spindles grew around the edge of the tumulus, and Mattie reached for a branch, running her thumb over the tight green fruits; in autumn each would be a shocking pink, splitting later to reveal scarlet seeds, but they were already fully formed – winter presaged before spring had even begun, Omega and Alpha.
She let the branch whip ba
ck. No, if she had known about Inez fourteen years ago, there was nothing she could have done. But now, she thought – I could do something now.
PART 2
‘I’VE BEEN MADE a leader,’ said Inez to her brother, round the half-open bedroom door. He’d been frowning over his prep, but he put the pen down and stared up at her.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘In the Amazons. Miss Simpkin’s made me one of the leaders.’ She took a step or two into his room. It smelled faintly of socks, though he was a fiend for bathing. His Youth League uniform was hanging from the wardrobe door, buttons polished, their reflections freckling the opposite wall.
‘So what do you have to do as leader?’
‘Oh, encourage my team, and think up ideas and all that sort of thing.’
‘And why were you chosen?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest. I’m no good at all.’ She sat down on the bed, hands on her lap. ‘It’s silly, really,’ she said.
‘Nothing silly about being given responsibility. But if you don’t enjoy it, you’d do better to join the League.’ He was already turning back to his books. His concentration was fearsome – an hour’s prep meant an hour’s prep, whereas Inez found her own schoolwork stretching thinly across entire weekends.
‘Miss Simpkin’s always talking about our mother,’ she said, ‘but it’s only things like “You should have seen her at such-and-such a deputation,” or “She heckled the Minister for this-and-that.” None of it’s interesting.’
‘What do you want her to say?’
Inez shrugged. Through the open window, she could hear the shouts of her half-siblings in the garden. One of them had a watering-can and was chasing the others; she could hear her stepmother laughing.
‘Miss Simpkin says she’ll try and find some magic-lantern slides of Mother.’
‘We already have photographs of her,’ said Ralph.
‘Yes, but I’ve seen those, I know them off by heart. I want some new ones.’
She took off her shoes and lay flat on the counterpane. Above her, a strand of cobweb stirred in the warm breeze.
‘Collins isn’t cleaning properly,’ said Inez. ‘I’ll have to tell Mama.’
Her gaze wandered across the ceiling, noting odd flaws in the plasterwork, a fine crack in the cornice. She had pored over the few images of her mother to the same obsessive degree, to the extent that she could no longer register the whole, only tiny details: a gilt clock in the background of the wedding picture, the blur of her brother’s foot in his christening photograph. In each, her mother’s expression was as formal as an engraving on a coin; one could learn nothing from it.
Miss Simpkin, by contrast, had a face as readable as a penny newspaper, enthusiasm and exasperation, encouragement and the odd gust of rage chasing across her features. ‘Thar she blows!’ some of the bolder girls would whisper, as Mattie sounded off about Mussolini, or dogs with docked tails, or vegetarians. She had visibly never taken the oft-repeated advice of the ‘Ask Althea’ page of Health and Beauty (to which Inez always turned first) that, if you wanted to avoid wrinkles, you should eschew both laughter and frowns.
There had been occasions, though, when Inez had caught Mattie looking at her with a very odd expression; some of the other girls had spotted it, too. ‘It’s as if she’s met you before but can’t remember where,’ Hildegard had said. It was peculiar; but then, of course, Miss Simpkin was peculiar. Normal people stayed indoors when it rained, and thought that nice stockings were important; they didn’t sing in public, they didn’t pick up frogs and tell you about Greek plays.
Inez rolled over and lifted her arms. ‘I wonder if our mother had slim wrists?’ she said, admiring her own. That was the sort of thing she wanted to know: the detail, the filling-in of blanks. She thought of her mother as one of those paper ladies that she’d cut out as a child, standing in their underwear on a cardboard base, waiting to be coloured and dressed. Her father wouldn’t ever discuss her in any detail (‘It wouldn’t be fair on Mama’) and all that Miss Simpkin offered were speech balloons. ‘No taxation without representation,’ said the paper mother. ‘I’m a thoroughly committed member of the cadre.’
There was a shout from somewhere in the house, and then footsteps taking the stairs two at a time.
‘It’s Simeon,’ said Ralph, and Inez sat up quickly and smoothed her skirt. She liked Ralph’s friend.
‘Hello, people,’ said Simeon. ‘Been polishing your buttons, Ralph? They’re absolutely blinding me.’
‘Let the outer man reflect the inner man. Yours were a disgrace last week – didn’t RC make you run twice round the lake as a punishment?’
‘A punishment for me, a treat for all observers – as I’m sure you’re aware, when I run, I look exactly like a gazelle.’
‘You talk such rot,’ said Ralph. ‘Give me five minutes to finish this and then I’ll be with you.’
Simeon exaggeratedly put his finger to his lips, and then sat on the bed quite close to Inez. The whole side of her body seemed to change temperature.
‘How are you, Eeny?’ he asked.
‘Quite well,’ she said, tilting her head down so that she was looking up at him through her lashes (another tip from ‘Ask Althea’).
‘What’s wrong? Have you hurt your neck?’
‘No!’ Quickly, she straightened her head again and tried to assume an expression of rapt interest (Widen the eyes and lean forward slightly). ‘Are you two going out somewhere?’ she asked.
‘Thought we might head off for a swim.’
‘I’ve just come back from the Amazons. Ralph thinks I should stop going and join the League instead. What do you think?’
‘Oh Lord, don’t ask me for an opinion,’ said Simeon, leaning back against the wall with his hands behind his head. ‘I only go because my father said it might help me get into Cambridge. Ralph’s your man of politics.’
‘He thinks Miss Simpkin’s a Communist sympathizer.’
‘What, the old baggage? I tell you what, if she storms the barricades, they’ll certainly stay stormed. She’s a one-woman battalion.’
He really was ridiculously good-looking, thought Inez – like the hero of a romantic novel, hair the requisite colour of ripe wheat, eyes a proper, deep blue, not the washed-out shade of her own.
‘I wouldn’t like to wear a uniform, though,’ she said. ‘I think perhaps uniforms don’t suit girls very well.’
She’d been hoping for a compliment (‘Depends on the girl’) but Simeon only nodded. ‘As a matter of fact, I saw some of your lot on the Heath last week,’ he said. ‘Waving flags on Parliament Hill.’
‘We were supposed to be learning semaphore,’ said Inez.
‘I gathered that. I stopped to tell them about the wonders of the modern telephonic system and one of the girls was awfully snappy with me.’
‘I wonder who it was?’
‘She had red hair.’
‘That’s Ida,’ said Inez. ‘She’s another one of the leaders.’
‘Bit of a looker, I thought.’
Inez felt as if she’d been kicked.
‘She’s Miss Simpkin’s char-lady,’ she said, stiffly.
‘Really?’ he seemed amused rather than shocked. ‘Goodness, how very socialist. And what’s she like?’
For once, he was looking straight at her, and with interest, but only because he wanted to know about Ida.
‘Common,’ said Inez. ‘She ties her plaits with string.’
‘Right. Done,’ said Ralph. He carefully screwed the lid back on his fountain pen and then stood and stretched. His profile, silhouetted against the window, looked exactly like that of their father. ‘Shall we go?’ The invitation was to Simeon only. The boys clattered off downstairs and Inez could hear them talking to Mama in the hall; there was chaffing and laughter.
‘Inez, the little ones are going to bathe the puppy, do you want to help?’ called Mama.
‘No thank you. Maybe later.’
&nb
sp; ‘But they’re not going to do it later, they’re filling the tub now!’
As ever, her stepmother’s voice bounced with good humour, all set for the type of child who giggled and cheeked; she had never grasped that some people were different, that some people preferred to be left alone.
‘I have a bit of a headache,’ called Inez.
‘Would you like me to bring you up a powder?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Or some lemonade?’
‘No, I’ll just …’ She lay back on Ralph’s bed again. She often had days like today, days when she thought she might literally die of boredom and yet could think of no event or encounter that might alleviate the condition, days when she felt entirely hollow, like a plaster cast – or a ship without ballast, heeling slowly on a windless sea. ‘Draw on your passions, girls,’ urged the school drama mistress, a woman who wove her own scarves; ‘Close your eyes and think of a time when you were burning with rage, or bubbling with delight,’ and Inez, eyes half shut, could recollect nothing stronger than the irritation occasioned by a mislaid brooch, or the mild satisfaction of finding it again.
Linking her hands behind her head, she lay and listened to the shrieks of the children.
‘And in biology we watched a rat being cut up,’ said Ida, pausing with the silver polish in one hand and a fork in the other. ‘Dissected,’ she added. ‘One of the boys nearly fainted, they had to lean him up against the wall.’
‘And what did you think?’ asked The Flea.
‘It was so tidy,’ said Ida, a sense of wonder still adhering to the memory. ‘The way the insides fitted in, there was no gaps. Were no gaps. And it looked just like the inside of humans in the classroom picture, only smaller. I hadn’t expected that. I thought it would be … I don’t know … a mess, like blood and worms.’ She looked up, sharply, in case she’d shocked Miss Lee, and actually caught her smiling. ‘I haven’t told my auntie,’ she said. ‘If she knew I was looking at rats she’d have me bleached. And in English we’re reading The Merchant of Venice.’ Her tone was suddenly glum.
‘I always found Shakespeare terribly difficult to understand. Miss Simpkin is the one who – ah, Mattie!’
‘Yes?’ said Mattie, entering the kitchen at speed.