by Lissa Evans
‘Oh Lord,’ said Mattie. ‘At least half a day. It was dark by the time I reached home; they’d sent the gardener out to look for me.’
‘And that was all because you asked me if I could row. And I said I could, though I couldn’t, not a stroke.’
‘I think I had been reading about galley slaves in Suetonius,’ said Mattie. Not that Suetonius had been on the curriculum of the small educational establishment opened by Miss Elouise Bridge and her sister in Bedford; Mattie, thirteen at the time, had begged to attend, anticipating rigour and depth, and had received instead a confetti of education, lightly sprinkled over the class and as lightly brushed aside: science confined to the life cycle of the butterfly, geography to the less rugged of the English counties, French restricted to phrases suitable for lady travellers drifting through the emporia of Nice in search of crocheted gloves.
She had complained of the school in her letters to Stephen and in return he had sent her the Suetonius, a Latin grammar and a fair copy of Pliny’s account of the eruption of Vesuvius. He had also pointed out that, in two respects at least, her current establishment was an improvement on his own: there was no corporal punishment, and no one expected the pupils to play rugby.
Indeed, they were not expected to play any sports at all, the only form of exercise suggested by the Miss Bridges being a gentle stroll around the school garden, in fine weather only. The fattening of breeding stock for market sprang to mind.
And then, one morning, there had been a new pupil: a girl a little younger than Mattie, with curly hair and cheekbones like a Tartar. Her name was Aileen Latimer and it rapidly became clear that she cared not a fig for any school subject, greeting every new task with dreadful sighs and groans and spending much of the time staring out of the window and whistling under her breath; a brief burst of industry during a Scripture lesson turned out to be not the requested account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand but a full-page drawing of a fish.
Intrigued, Mattie had sought her out – so many of the other girls seemed cut from the same dull pattern, but here was someone as untailored, in her own way, as herself. ‘I have never been as bored in my entire life,’ were Aileen’s first words to her.
It transpired that while her parents were abroad she had been sent from her country home to stay with elderly relatives, and these relatives had, after a trying few days of Aileen’s company, decided that some daily occupation was needed. She was utterly unteachable, but she was also vastly entertaining – for the two months of her attendance, it was like having a tame bear-cub in the classroom, and, out of it, a wild pony.
‘Do you remember the penknife-throwing contest?’ asked Mattie. ‘We drew a target on a tree. You had seen a stage act, I think.’
‘Arcola the Great. I could have done that, I feel.’
‘Become a professional knife-thrower?’
‘Instead of marrying. Yes, why not?’ She stumbled slightly, flinging out an arm to keep her balance, the weighted Gladstone bag describing an arc that could have felled a horse.
‘Let me take that,’ said Mattie.
‘I can think of many things I should have done instead of marry. Crossed the Nubian Desert on a camel. Dived for pearls. You never met Hubert, did you?’
‘No.’
‘I was never clever, like you and the other comrades … hated reading, brain like an absolute brick, I couldn’t paint or … or sculpt, only run like a Mohican, and nobody wanted lady athletes, and he was terribly handsome and wealthy and my family had a beast of a house but no money and everyone was fearfully pleased. Of course, he drank, but no one thought … you never met him?’
‘No,’ said Mattie, threading Aileen through the narrow gap between a perambulator and a brace of bull terriers. ‘Don’t you remember – after you left the Miss Bridges’, we didn’t meet again until the Albert Hall. More than twenty years.’
‘Yes, of course, my banner! And you were tying that scoundrel Winston into knots.’
Churchill had been giving a speech about the miners, his staccato delivery a gift to the astute heckler:
‘One great question. Remains to be settled—’
‘And that,’ shouted Mattie, leaning forward in the circle, ‘is women’s suffrage!’
Churchill struggling on amidst shushes and cheers – ‘The men have been complaining. Of me—’
‘The women have been complaining of you, too, Mr Churchill!’
‘But in the circumstances. What can we do but—’
‘Give votes to women!’
And from the gods, a great cheer as a banner unspooled, VOTES FOR WOMEN in red paint, dangling twenty feet into the auditorium, and in the meantime, Mattie being dragged from her seat, her jacket torn, her shins bounced on each stair, a ladder of bruises …
Afterwards, amidst the dispersing crowds, a woman had rushed up – ‘Mattie! It is you!’ – and it had been Aileen, recognizable as much by that same stamping, restless energy as by her cheekbones. ‘Left my husband and found a cause,’ she’d said, spanning two decades in a sentence. ‘He was rather a terrible man.’ And during her marriage, one of those prominent cheekbones had lost its smooth curve, and one of her wrists had set at a slight angle, so that she could throw stones only with her left hand. Spirits, she’d declared, helped with the stiffness. And had gone on helping.
‘You know, I’m sure I can walk even faster,’ said Aileen.
Mattie checked her wristwatch. ‘I think we’re doing very well. How are you feeling?’
‘Oh, far more sensible. What does this remind you of?’ She tapped their linked arms with her free hand.
‘The exercise yard.’
‘Exactly. Except that we shouldn’t be talking.’
‘At six o’clock, Ettie Smyth will be conducting a choir outside the West Wall,’ said Mattie, without moving her lips; Aileen laughed, delightedly.
‘You were always very skilled at that. And I remember that you could whistle and hum at the same time.’
‘I still can, though there’s surprisingly little call for it these days.’
They passed a news stand with the words ‘PANKHURST FUNERAL’ chalked above it, and Aileen gave it a shuddering glance, and fell silent. It was another few minutes before Mattie realized that her friend was quietly weeping.
‘Perhaps we should have that drink now,’ said Mattie, scanning the street ahead for a public house. ‘We’re not far from the gates.’
‘I simply can’t think where the time’s gone. I simply can’t think, I can’t think.’
‘What do you mean, dear?’
‘I feel as if Holloway were last week and then there are years and years that have just’ – she flapped a hand in disbelief – ‘gone. Sand between my fingers. I went into the church and for a moment I wondered whether I were in the wrong place. We’re all so old, Mattie. It was full of old ladies.’
‘You are only fifty-six, Aileen, and in any case, remember Tennyson: “Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.” Now, this looks suitable.’
The Lantern was spruce and shining, every wall glittering with mirrors, the smell of polish hanging in the air. It was also empty save for the barman and a single elderly drinker, a white stick propped beside him.
‘Two brandies,’ said Mattie. The barman shook his head, scarcely pausing as he buffed a glass. ‘We don’t serve unaccompanied females.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Rules.’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be rather more precise than that. Which rule?’
The man jerked his head towards a framed list above the optics.
Mattie leaned across the bar, tilting her eye-glasses to improve her focus.
‘The landlord reserves the right to …’ she read out. ‘Are you the landlord?’
‘No, but I’m in loco, ain’t I?’
‘You’re worried, presumably, that we are prostitutes touting for trade?’
‘Now, now!’ He looked as outraged as if she’d just spat at him. ‘It’s the
look of the thing. Ladies drinking.’
‘I need scarcely point out that your only other customer is blind.’
‘I’d just like a tiny little brandy,’ said Aileen, ‘with a splash of soda,’ but as she spoke, the door opened, and the barman swung his attention to a group of men and the shrilly yapping Jack Russell that accompanied them; there had been some minor triumph, voices raised, hands clapping the shoulder of one of the crowd, a race won or a bet claimed, and Mattie and Aileen were suddenly no more visible than a couple of tables, obstacles to be avoided on the way to the bar.
‘Come along,’ said Mattie, taking her friend’s arm.
‘Even without soda,’ said Aileen, plaintively; salt from the tears had formed a fine lacework across her cheeks.
Outside, there was rain in the air, the wind flapping like a damp tea-towel.
‘There’s bound to be another hostelry nearby,’ said Mattie; Aileen’s arm was dragging on hers.
‘I’m tired.’
‘Not far to go now.’
‘And my feet hurt. I used to run everywhere.’
‘I know.’
‘Or even skate – I was a wonderful skater. Do you remember the census? When none of us slept in our own beds because we were protesting … what was it, what were we protesting?’
‘That we were not recognized as full citizens under the law.’
‘Such tremendous fun, the whole of the WSPU shop full of mattresses, and Marian Lawson and I went roller-skating at the Aldwych rink for the entire night, and I could have carried on the next day. I wasn’t tired then, I was never tired. I wish – oh, there’s a pub!’
The Horse and Dray was neither spruce nor shining, its stucco façade pock-marked, its windows so filthy that it was not until Mattie opened the door that she realized the saloon was crowded.
‘It’s the Sally Anne,’ said a youth just inside the door. ‘Where’s your tambourines?’
‘Just a small brandy,’ said Aileen.
There was a crash of skittles from one side of the room, and shouts from the bar, the crowd five-deep, with striped shirtsleeves and the dusty jackets of plasterers, a low roar of conversation, odd faces already turning to look at the incomers, glances of indifference or puzzlement or derision, one fellow nudging another and a burst of laughter from somewhere as Aileen stumbled on the step. Mattie found herself suddenly, unexpectedly, jibbing at the sequence of tiny battles ahead – the ten minutes of vocal sparring, the deft mental footwork and sheer bloody-minded persistence that would be needed simply to cross the bar-room, order a measure and then drink it. She had, for once, no stomach for a fight; the thought was disquieting.
‘We should go,’ she said. ‘It’ll take too long.’
‘Oh no!’ Aileen clutched at the lintel on her way out. ‘You promised me.’
‘We shall find somewhere private and you can take a little nip from the bottle.’
‘Really?’ She brightened. ‘Where?’
‘I have an idea.’
There was something rather suburban about the eastern side of Brompton Cemetery – the headstones of a uniform height, the paths straight, the shrubs clipped. A gardener was edging the lawn, another sweeping the broad path. An elderly couple walked arm in arm, the woman holding a bunch of yellow tulips wrapped in newspaper, their stems dripping a trail across the gravel.
‘I can’t drink it here,’ hissed Aileen. ‘Not in front of people.’
‘Wait just a moment.’
From the direction of the Fulham Road, at the far end of the long lime avenue that bisected the cemetery, came an indefinable noise – a steady murmuring, like bees on blossom.
‘What a crowd there must be,’ said Mattie. ‘Though the cortège can’t have arrived yet, if they’re still chattering. Now, just over here it all becomes a little more secluded – I once came in search of Fanny Brawne’s tomb, and instead stumbled across George Borrow’s.’
Crossing the avenue, they entered a region of grieving angels and cracked vaults, elder shoots forcing their way through splits in the masonry, every slab tilting and grouted with moss.
‘Did you ever read Borrow’s Wild Wales?’ asked Mattie, halting beside a weeping Niobe and handing over the Gladstone bag.
‘You know quite well that I’ve never finished a book in my life. And I went to Wales once and they forced me to eat seaweed and since then—’ Aileen’s fingers nipped ineffectually at the cork. ‘I can’t, Mattie. You’ll have to do it for me. Take some yourself.’
‘Afterwards, perhaps.’
She handed back the opened bottle, and Aileen took a small sip.
‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s all I wanted. Perhaps one more, though.’ The second sip was more of a mouthful. ‘Can you hear something?’ she asked, cocking her head.
The far-off murmur had thickened; as Mattie listened, it rose to a crescendo then abruptly died away. In the silence she could hear the hooting of a tug on the river.
‘The cortège must be here,’ she said. ‘Shall we go?’
She moved to take the bottle, and Aileen swapped it swiftly to her other hand and retreated in the direction of the lime avenue, her expression suddenly shifty and alien, a dragon guarding its hoard.
‘Now come along …’ said Mattie, following. ‘Let me cork it, at least. Glenfiddich’s far too expensive to hurl around.’
She made another grab for the bottle, and Aileen swung it away and a jet of whisky curved through the air and broke in a pungent wave across the windscreen of a maroon Alvis that had been moving at a stately pace from the Chelsea Lane entrance. The motor-car halted just as Mattie wrenched the bottle from Aileen’s grasp. It was almost empty.
‘Oh, please,’ said Aileen, panting, hands opening and closing in desperation. ‘Please, Mattie, please give it back.’ The dragon had fled; she was helpless again, and trembling, and Mattie could hardly bear to see her in such a state, on this day, in this place.
‘Go on,’ she said.
Aileen snatched it back and raised it to her mouth and, in the angle between her profile and the bottle, Mattie saw the door of the motor-car open, and a woman step out on to the drive. It was Jacqueline Fletcher, dressed in black, her mouth an ‘O’ of amazement. And, possibly, amusement.
‘What on earth is going on?’ she asked. ‘I said to Richard, “Surely that can’t be Mattie Simpkin, brawling over a bottle in the middle of the cemetery!”’
‘Oh, hello, Jacko,’ said Mattie, as if they’d just bumped into each other in the haberdashery department of Dickins & Jones. Embarrassment was not something to which she was prone, but she was conscious of the exceptional awkwardness of the encounter. She eased the bottle from Aileen’s fingers and stowed it in the Gladstone bag.
‘And is that’ – Jacko’s expression changed from ersatz shock to the genuine article – ‘Aileen?’ She was clearly struggling not to stare. ‘Oh my word … it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’
‘Hello, Jacko,’ said Aileen. ‘You look awfully smart and pretty.’
‘Thank you.’
Instead of a reciprocal remark, there was a short, painful silence, broken by the squeal of cloth on glass.
‘This is my husband, Richard,’ said Jacko.
He was tall, with rigidly handsome features, and a complexion scoured by the Antipodean sun; the general impression was that of a classical statue carved out of brisket. He paused in his cleaning of the windscreen, and raised his hat.
Mattie bowed, stiffly.
‘I think, in any case, we should walk from here,’ said Jacko. ‘I’m surprised, though, that you’re not at the south entrance, being marshalled by General Drummond.’
‘We took a different route,’ said Mattie. The phrase seemed to clang with significance.
‘Yes, Mattie and I walked the whole way from the church, lickety-spit, I was always a great walker, though I never had a lovely motor-car like yours. I’d call that colour claret, wouldn’t you? Do you drive?’ asked Aileen, her tone that of a hostess at
an amusing dinner, the whisky clearly beginning to take effect.
‘I leave the driving to Richard. Shall we go?’ said Jacko, taking her husband’s arm; alongside her, Aileen rattled on.
‘I hadn’t known you were married; I was married once, but it was awful. Do you have hordes of children?’
‘No,’ said Jacko, rather distantly.
‘Neither do I. Just as well, I’ve never had any patience with them, I couldn’t have been a teacher, like Mattie was. Did you know that she runs a club for young persons?’
‘Yes,’ said Jacko. ‘As do I. In fact, I rather think that I might have given her the idea in the first place.’
Mattie thought, with instant ire, of Jacko’s dismissal of the Amazons in the Ham & High article. Childish games. Classroom debate.
‘Is that true, Mattie?’ asked Aileen, gaily, continuing her impression of a one-woman cocktail party.
‘It certainly arose out of a discussion about introducing young women to a wider world,’ said Mattie.
‘Not only young women but also young men, in our case,’ said Richard. He had a hoarse edge to his voice, as if he’d been shouting.
Mattie shook her head. ‘I’m afraid that I don’t consider militarism an introduction to a wider world.’
‘It’s not militarism but discipline. You’ll find that very little can be achieved without it.’
‘Discipline need not include drill and uniforms – good God, every woman here today could verify that. Obedience should come from the will, not from the whip.’
‘I’m talking about self-discipline.’
‘The Amazons have plenty of self-discipline.’
‘Yes,’ said Jacko. ‘We’ve seen them. Scampering around the Heath.’
‘Rabbits scamper. My girls are hares and foxes, fit, alert and brimming with initiative.’
Jacko smiled. ‘One hardly dares to point out what happens to hares and foxes in real life.’
‘In real life they learn to survive,’ said Mattie. ‘As so many in uniform did not survive, blindly obeying.’
Aileen was looking from one to another, her mouth pinned into a bright smile.
‘I’m sure both clubs are simply wonderful. What’s yours called, Jacko?’