by Lissa Evans
‘I suppose you’re talking about Votes for Women, again.’ Her tone was contemptuous.
‘Among other things.’
‘I’m never going to vote.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if you have enough money it doesn’t matter who’s Prime Minister and because, if it wasn’t for the stupid cause, my mother wouldn’t be dead.’
In the sudden quiet, they could hear the sound of girls’ voices outside.
The Flea’s mouth seemed full of ash. ‘I’m not sure if that’s the case, Inez.’
‘Of course it is. What on earth would you know about it? It was Father who told me, all the hunger strikes made her so weak that she died of anaemia just after I was born.’ Inez stood up, abruptly, the sudden movement sending the greaseproof shapes wafting across the kitchen. ‘And she didn’t ever get to vote, anyway, so it was all a waste of time, wasn’t it?’
She doesn’t know that her mother took her own life, thought The Flea. Of course she doesn’t – who would ever tell a child such a thing? And yet it seemed that the act had left a lacuna in the family, a centre too fragile to approach, so that Venetia was barely spoken of, and Inez gripped by a cramping, bottomless hunger for information, a hunger that pushed aside all other thoughts and feelings. She was like a fledgling waiting solely for the next morsel.
The back door opened and the scullery passage was suddenly full of footsteps and chatter.
‘I could drink from a horse trough, I’m that thirsty.’
‘Look in the mirror here, Winnie, your face is the colour of an absolute tomato.’
‘Miss Lee,’ said Ida, coming into the kitchen, ‘do you have a hammer and nails, one of the table-tops is loose? And could we have some water to drink, please?’
Everyone was pink-faced, blouses limp with sweat, hair damp. Inez stood back, leaning against the Welsh dresser.
‘Do remember to keep your hats on, girls. Sunstroke is a horrid thing. And try not to carry too much. Inez, could you take the clubs?’
‘Are you coming to watch, Miss Lee?’ asked Ida, from behind a tower of biscuit tins.
‘Yes, but I’ll have a tidy round first. Elsie, I know you’re strong, but really, you mustn’t try to carry more than one jug of lemonade at a time.’
She followed the girls outside and watched the laden procession heading again for the Heath.
A few ants still hung in the air, but there were hundreds more heaped on the wall, clambering over one another, clumsy and glistening, wings untried.
The heat was stunning. The Flea turned back to the house and the faintness returned with a dip and a swoop; real, this time. She found herself lying on the grass, with a daisy tickling her nose, and no knowledge of how long she might have been there, though the air was full of insects again, and the sun had shifted from its zenith. When she sat up, her heart broke into a stumbling run and she pressed a hand to her breastbone and waited, her fingers cold despite the sun, her mouth dry.
It was just as bad as Ida had imagined; worse, actually, because the members of the Empire League hadn’t been hauling tables and tins around for an hour, and so were not only looking smart but as cool as a row of cucumbers – and resembling exactly that, in their dark green uniforms – while the Amazons looked like a bag of bakery seconds, Doris Elphick in a brown gym-slip, Hildegard in a maroon one, Elsie in her older sister’s frock, which came halfway down her calves, Avril and Winnie in matching print play-dresses, Freda – for some terrible reason – in a pair of khaki jodhpurs, and on and on, nothing matching or new, only their sashes providing any link between them. As the two teams lined up for photographs, you could see the spectators pointing and grinning as they commented on the difference.
It wasn’t a big crowd, thank goodness – it was too hot for that, and mostly it was just small kids, sitting cross-legged with their lemonade and ginger cake, and a cluster of adults standing in the shade of the trees, some of the ladies with parasols. The woman in charge of the Youth League had a lovely pale green duster coat and a white cloche and Miss Simpkin had a straw hat the size of a cartwheel which looked as if someone had recently sat on it. She was talking to a man in a striped blazer, fragments of her speech intermittently audible; Ida heard her declaim the words, ‘Say not the needle is the proper pen for women,’ and knew she was quoting something – it was astonishing how many quotes were packed into Miss Simpkin’s head; it was like a work-box stuffed with coloured wools to match every possible shade and texture. ‘We may each have but a single pair of eyes,’ she’d said to Ida, ‘but if we read, we can borrow the vision of myriad others.’ Though only the myriad others who wrote books, of course.
‘Who’s got the clubs?’ asked Doris. ‘We’re up first, aren’t we? Anyone seen the brown canvas bag with the clubs?’
There was a pause; Ida looked at Inez.
‘Oh,’ said Inez.
‘What d’you mean, “Oh”?’
‘I think the bag might still be by the back door.’
‘What?’
‘I had to fasten my buckle and I put it down for a moment.’
‘And you didn’t pick it up again?’
‘I was carrying something else as well.’
‘We were all carrying something else as well.’
‘I’ll go back and get it, shall I?’ Inez essayed a vague movement in the direction of the house.
‘I’ll go,’ said Doris. ‘I’m the fastest runner.’
She was gone in an instant; Inez wrapped her hands around her elbows and gazed over towards the trees, pointedly avoiding the stares of the other Amazons. ‘I didn’t do it deliberately,’ she said.
‘I don’t suppose you did,’ said Freda, ‘but you might say sorry, at the very least.’
‘Someone’s going to have to tell Miss Simpkin,’ said Winnie. ‘Bagsy not me.’
‘Me neither,’ said Avril.
‘Well, obviously, it should be Inez,’ said Freda. ‘It’s only justice.’
The Ham & High had sent along the sports reporter.
‘So, hang on,’ he said, licking his pencil. ‘When you say that it’s a political organization …’
‘Only in the Greek sense.’
‘The Greek …?’
‘I have no party affiliation, merely the aim of encouraging the girls to take their rightful places in the modern world. Knowledge, confidence, ready laughter and a strong overarm throw will equip them for many arenas.’
She was watching the teams as she spoke: why on earth Jacko had chosen to clothe the League in garments the colour of a municipal drainpipe was quite beyond her. By contrast, the Amazons, aligning themselves for a photograph, were a frieze of splendid non-conformity.
‘Glory be to God for dappled things,’ she said, ‘for skies as couple-coloured as a brinded cow.’
The journalist, frowning, turned a page. ‘So there’s a religious element, then, to the club?’
‘Heaven forbid,’ said Mattie.
Jacko, standing close by, gave a chuckle.
‘Miss Simpkin is gulling you,’ she said to the journalist. ‘Verbal sparring is her speciality – beware!’
Mattie managed a stiff smile; Jacko’s friendliness had been unexpected and disconcerting. Instead of the preliminary rattle of arms, there had been a ghastly half-hour of Fascist small talk, conversation among the group of League supporters under the trees moving viscously from the Ethiopian Treaty to the Menace of the Trades Unions via the impossibility of hiring a cook.
‘Should we start?’ asked Mattie, eyeing the scuffles beginning to break out among the smallest of the spectators. ‘We are in danger of losing our audience.’
‘I think one of your girls is coming over to talk to you,’ said Jacko. ‘Oh, I recognize her. That’s Inez, isn’t it? Her brother Ralph’s our first officer and a thorough brick.’ She swayed nearer to Mattie’s ear and lowered her voice. ‘You know that their mother was the splendid Venetia Campbell? Though I fear that the splendour may somewhat have bypasse
d Inez – perhaps she’s more her father’s child. How do you find her?’
‘I find her to be bursting with potential,’ said Mattie, tight-lipped.
‘Really? Hello, Inez!’
‘Hello, Mrs Cellini.’
‘I very much like your sash. What are all those gold stars for?’
‘One of them is for something to do with initiative, I think. I can’t really remember the rest. Miss Simpkin?’
‘Yes, Inez?’
‘The Indian clubs were accidentally left behind at your house. Doris has gone back for them.’
‘Oh. Oh dear.’
‘Oh dear,’ echoed Jacko, sympathetically, in a way that made Mattie want to pick her up like a caber and toss her over the refreshments table. ‘Well, it won’t really make any difference if we go first, will it? Let me have a word with Richard.’
She left to speak to her husband and Mattie saw him raise an eyebrow; both of them glanced back at her, Jacko’s mouth bunched in suppressed amusement.
‘They’re laughing at us,’ said Inez.
‘As I’ve said many times, one should never mind that.’ Although, to be frank, she was currently minding it very much indeed.
‘My brother Ralph says they call the Amazons “The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies-O”.’
‘I have been called far worse, Inez, and I can assure you that I’ve suffered no chronic effects.’
‘Ralph’s friend Simeon said we’re bound to lose the treasure hunt.’
‘Why?’
‘Because girls talk all the time, so they’ll be winning while we’re still discussing the clues.’
‘How ridiculous. What did you say by way of riposte?’
Inez shrugged. ‘I didn’t. It doesn’t really matter, does it? And if we do win, it won’t be anything to do with me, will it? I never know anything.’
‘You’re part of the team.’
‘Not really.’
Her expression was, as always, impassive; Angus, carved from clay. Oh, for something, thought Mattie, that might animate those features; oh, that the afternoon might end in a victory to which Inez had somehow contributed, and in that moment of personal triumph (‘and everyone’s congratulating you and you feel like a queen,’ Ida had said) – in that joyful melee of hats thrown, hands clasped, friendship encircling all like a golden girdle – might the girl not see something beyond herself, a shining city?
‘GOOD AFTERNOON.’
The announcement was so loud that one of the lady spectators gave a little shriek. Richard Cellini, dressed in a stalking jacket, had brought a megaphone with him.
‘WELCOME TO THE HAMPSTEAD HEATH YOUTH GAMES. THE DISPLAY WILL BEGIN WITH A DEMONSTRATION OF FORMATION MARCHING BY THE EMPIRE YOUTH LEAGUE. FORWARD – THE LEAGUE!!’
The snare drums rattled like a burst of fireworks and the children in the crowd scrambled to their feet.
‘Inez,’ said Mattie.
‘Yes?’
‘Later on in the day, remember that ash trees have keys.’
‘What?’
‘The fruit of the ash tree is called a key. Look, I think I can see Doris on her way back. You’d better join the others.’
Inez drifted away, and Mattie watched the marchers cross and criss-cross in a web of well-drilled pointlessness, the ferocious rhythm of the drums setting up an answering throb in her own head. ‘Such discipline,’ one of Jacko’s friends was saying, ‘and how smart they look!’ and Jacko herself was taking photographs while her husband stood with his legs apart and his hands behind his back, like an adjutant (though he was nothing of the sort, he’d been head of an insurance firm in Brisbane), and in the distance, behind the rows of swinging arms and blank expressions, Mattie could see Inez slowly approaching the other girls and Good God, she thought, Good God, what was I thinking? What have I done? And the realization was like a dead weight, impossible for her to carry, and she let it drop and waved encouragingly at Doris, who had trotted the last few yards, apparently still full of puff, swinging the canvas bag. Splendid girls, she thought, they were splendid girls; all of them.
No one could pretend that the club-swinging had gone well. What should have looked effortless felt laboured, and instead of rows of graceful, rhythmic arcs, there were awkward jerks and the intermittent clack of collisions. Worst of all, Elsie’s sweaty fingers released a club mid-swing and it flew like a bulbous arrow and hit the journalist from the Ham & High on the right shin. One of the League boys shouted, ‘LBW!’
After that, there were demonstrations of self-defence, semaphore and Morse code, followed by a brief debate on a subject picked out of a hat (‘This House believes that education should be compulsory up to the age of twenty-one’ – a motion unpopular with the junior crowd, despite Freda’s able defence), and then the Empire League sang ‘Marching to the Bright Horizon’ and the Amazons sang ‘Bread and Roses’ and, halfway through the second verse, Winnie was sick on the grass. Ida helped to carry her into the shade.
‘I suggest that everyone stays out of the sun for twenty minutes,’ said Miss Simpkin, just as Mr Cellini was raising his megaphone.
‘THE YOUTH GAMES WILL RECOMMENCE IN TWENTY MINUTES.’
‘It’s not the sun,’ said Avril, charged with applying a cold compress to her sister’s forehead. ‘It’s because she ate five pieces of ginger cake.’
‘Four,’ said Winnie, feebly.
Ida fanned herself with her hat, relieved that the most public aspect of the display was over. It was odd, she thought, that Miss Lee hadn’t come to watch.
‘You look awfully hot.’
She turned to see one of the League boys, older than her, all smirk and sparkling buttons.
‘Ten out of ten for observation,’ she said, tartly, and he grinned, showing teeth like a film star’s.
‘I’ve brought you some lemonade.’
‘Have you? Why?’
‘Don’t you want it?’
‘All right.’ She took the glass and downed it in a couple of gulps. ‘Thanks.’
‘Have mine as well, if you’re that thirsty.’
‘No thank you.’ She waited for him to go, but he stayed, seemingly perfectly at ease. He looked like John Barrymore, only more handsome. ‘Your name’s Ida, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was just talking to Inez,’ he said. ‘Her brother’s a great friend of mine.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing, really. I’m just making conversation.’
‘Why?’
‘Because despite looking as if you’re about to burst into flames, you’re very pretty.’
She could hardly get any redder, but she found herself smiling for what was certainly the first time that day.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ he said. ‘Flag-waving on Parliament Hill. You were quite snappish with me last time as well. I obviously bring out the worst in you.’
‘I expect I was concentrating.’
‘I expect you were. I’m going to sit down – would you care to join me?’
She hesitated, and then he took out a handkerchief and spread it on the grass for her, so she could hardly refuse, though she twitched it a bit further away from him before she sat.
‘My name’s Simeon, by the way,’ he said. ‘Are you enjoying the afternoon?’
‘Not much.’
‘Nor me. On the whole, I’d rather be swimming. What about you, what would you prefer to be doing?’
‘Just … sitting in the shade, I think.’
‘As you are now?’
‘Yes.’
‘So I’ve already made your afternoon perfect!’
She had to laugh a bit. ‘Maybe if I had an ice as well.’
He leaned back on his hands, almost inspecting her.
‘Are you still at school?’ he asked.
‘No. Are you?’
‘I’ve just matriculated. So what do you do?’
‘If you’ve been talking to Inez, I bet you know that already. I bet she couldn’t wait to tell you where
I work.’
‘At Big Chief Amazon’s?’
‘Yes.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘What do you mean, you “don’t mind”? What’s it got to do with you, anyway?’
‘You’re absolutely right, it’s none of my business. I just meant that being Miss Simpkin’s daily doesn’t make you any less pretty. Or snappish.’ He gave her another grin, though this time she was less inclined to smile back.
‘I go to classes as well,’ she said. ‘I want to get on.’
‘Do you? Crikey, I don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘“Getting on” always seems to imply having to work in an office from dawn till dusk. I think I’d like to do something less … straitjacketed.’
‘Nice to have the choice.’
‘Ralph wants to be Prime Minister. He’s terribly self-disciplined.’
‘Is that Inez’s brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘He doesn’t sound much like her.’
‘I gather you two don’t get on.’
‘Is that what she says? We “don’t get on”? After I’ve spent weeks and weeks helping her with everything and trying to be nice, while she looks down her nose at me as if I’m her flipping lady’s maid!’
Simeon was looking bemused.
‘Don’t get cross,’ he said. ‘Inez is just a silly, rather boring little girl. Nobody takes any notice of her. I don’t. You’re ten times more interesting.’
‘How do you know I’m more interesting? We only met about a minute ago.’
‘I can sense it.’
‘Oh, don’t be daft.’ She looked away, unsure of whether to feel flattered or angry. It seemed that people like him, people with easy lives, were always assuming things about her: she was stupid because she was a char; she was interesting because she was pretty; she’d be loyal because she was grateful. Nobody except Miss Lee ever asked her what she really thought.
‘You’re not awfully good at receiving compliments, are you?’ said Simeon. ‘I was always told that one should simply say thank you.’
‘Well, bully for one.’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘I don’t mind saying thank you for the lemonade, though.’
‘That’s all right.’ He looked up at her, squinting at the bright beads of sunlight between the leaves. ‘Best of luck for the treasure hunt. Do you have any idea of how it’s supposed to proceed?’