“Me!” they all squealed. Maggie jumped up and wrapped her arms around her brother’s legs, dark braids dangling over her shoulders.
“Now remember, just like Pa did it. Nice and fast. Hold your hands out, young ladies. Both hands. Now close your eyes. And I mean close them properly—I can see you squinting, Miss Flora Murphy.” He tickled her tummy, and she howled with laughter as she tried to wiggle away.
“Honestly, Freddie,” Essie sighed as she prepared the tea for her mother. “I was trying to keep them quiet before bed, not stir them up so they won’t sleep.” But even as she tried to scold her brother, her shoulders softened at the sight of his wan cheeks and tired eyes. Freddie had tried to step into Pa’s shoes and find a job that paid enough to support them all, but he was still just a lad himself, with no skills or education, and with his dreamy demeanor and hapless optimism he had more in common with Gertie than their soldier father. Still, he was trying.
“Freddie,” Essie said softly. “You need to eat . . .”
“Shh,” said Freddie as he held a finger up to his mouth.
Essie held her breath as she noticed how like their father her older brother looked. The bridge of the nose, square jaw, and strong hands. In different clothes he could be an aristocrat.
“Hands,” he barked, like their pa used to, and the girls straight-ened like soldiers and obediently held their hands out and closed their eyes. Maggie popped one open before squeezing it shut.
“Button, button . . . who has the button?”
He dropped the button into Gertie’s hand and she clasped her fingers around it, squeezing it for a few beats before opening her eyes.
If Gertie were the God-fearing type, Essie would have sworn her sister was praying for something. More food, most likely.
“Right, now you play with your sisters, Gertie-girl, while I have my wash,” instructed Freddie as he tried to peel the twins from his legs. But the twins were having none of it. They ignored Gertie and dropped to their brother’s feet, kneeling on the cold dirt floor like a couple of puppies and bickering over who would be the one to untie the laces of his filthy boots.
As Essie pulled the bathtub from its hook on the wall and turned to boil up hot water for Freddie to bathe, she noticed Gertie’s usually composed face light up with a smile as she slipped a shining gold button into her apron pocket. For a moment Essie glimpsed the cheeky, carefree girl Gertie kept hidden away under her pinafore.
* * *
Gertie must have forgotten to return the button to Freddie, though, because here it was now, tucked under the corner of her book.
Carefully, so as not to distract her sister, Essie moved forward for a closer look.
The button was a double-layered flower: a rose fashioned from gold, with just the faintest traces of blue and white paint. At the center of the flower and dotted along the petals were blue, red, and white stones. Were they precious stones, or colored paste? Each of the inner circles also had gold indents, as if there were more to come.
Who did this button belong to? Also, if this was just a button, what on earth had the dress it was intended for looked like?
Freddie must have accidentally pocketed this on his worksite yesterday and then, in his excitement upon finding it, hadn’t been able to resist showing it off to the girls. It was so typical of Freddie to forget to take it back from Gertie when they’d finished their game. Instead, he’d wearily trudged straight upstairs to bed after his supper of bread and dripping. Essie would force Gertie to give the button back to Freddie the minute he arrived home this evening.
She took a minute to look at a sketch of the button Gertie had made below her spelling list. Their accountant neighbor, Mr. Yarwood, had insisted on giving Gertie the ledger book to use for her drawings when she and her sisters had been over for a supper of pea and ham soup, followed by a sponge cake loaded with bilberries and cream last week. “Silly me, I bought the wrong one. Only good for your sketches, Miss Gertie.”
Even in black ink, Gertie had managed to capture the curve of the petal, the grand skeleton of the gold framework. The divots for the missing parts had been marked with shadows to indicate their depth.
Essie remembered Freddie holding the clump of soil over his head yesterday. The river of gemstones and jewelry falling from the soil.
The man with green eyes.
Freddie had taken this button from that soil. Stolen it.
Had he taken anything else?
Essie felt her chest tighten with a dangerous mix of fear and hope as she looked across the classroom to where the twins were squabbling. They knew their days in this classroom were nearing an end.
She looked at the button and resolved to speak with Freddie tonight. Were the pretty jewels colored glass paste, or precious stones? Freddie wasn’t reckless and wouldn’t intentionally forget something so valuable; it was just that, like their ma used to say when Essie and her brother were small, he was away with the fairies half the time.
Essie was just reaching for Gertie’s shoulder to say something about the button when Miss Barnes entered the room wearing a big smile and holding two enormous red apples up in the air.
“Who would like a slice of apple?” she asked as she pulled a penknife from the drawer of her desk and proceeded to slice the fruit.
Chaos ensued, as chairs were scraped back and a sea of grubby hands shot into the air.
“Me, please!”
“Miss, me!”
When Essie looked back at her sister, Gertie was gazing out the window, lost in a daydream. But the book was closed, and the button was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
The bell rang loudly and a tangle of children rushed to the door, eager to be outside before the afternoon started to fade.
Miss Barnes, who was packing up her desk, beckoned to Essie to join her.
“We have our annual summer excursion coming up. Mr. Morton has insisted that we take the children to Greenwich on Saturday fortnight. I was wondering whether you might be able to join us?”
“Certainly,” Essie replied as she looked over her shoulder and saw that Gertie had paid no heed at all to the bell. She was still at her book finishing the extra algebra questions Miss Barnes had written on the board just for her. The twins were outside watching the boys roll a hoop across the gravel.
A shaft of light came in the window, and Essie thought how peaceful Gertie seemed. Her frustrated jostling with the twins as they tied their boots and dressed, and her constant ribbing as they walked to school, calmed as soon as they entered the school gates.
“I’ve been meaning to ask whether your mother has read the letter I gave you,” Miss Barnes remarked.
Essie squirmed a little and glanced again at Gertie. The girl’s gaze was fixed on her book, but she had gone very still. She was listening to every word the teacher was saying, Essie knew. Not much escaped Gertie, despite her dreamy demeanor.
“Sorry, Miss Barnes. I did pass it on, but Ma’s been rather . . . busy.”
Essie hoped the young teacher did not pick up on her hesitation. She looked at this neat young woman, with smart heels and an open face full of possibility.
“I see,” said Miss Barnes, even though she clearly didn’t. “I thought something like that might be the case.” She spoke softly, with a slight quiver—as if she were nervous. “I’m leaving at the end of term. Just before Christmas. I’ve been offered a position at another school.”
“Congratulations,” stammered Essie, sad for the girls to lose such a valued teacher.
“It’s a school just for girls. Clever girls, in fact.”
The shock must have been written on Essie’s face as Miss Barnes continued: “It’s been running for quite some time. Miss Beale—the previous principal—even set up a college at Oxford: St. Hilda’s.”
“I’ve never heard of a school where girls go right to the end,” said Essie shyly. “Though I suppose they exist, otherwise how would we have wonderful teachers like you?”
Miss
Barnes blushed.
“The children will miss you,” said Essie with a sad smile. “We all will.”
Gertie had stopped pretending not to listen, and was staring at them both, openmouthed and red-faced.
“You can’t leave!” spluttered Gertie.
“Gertie!” warned Essie.
“What, Essie?” said Gertie as she lifted her book and slapped it back onto the desk. “There’s no point to this if Miss Barnes is leaving. And Mr. Morton is about to throw us out.” She burst into tears.
“I’m sorry, Gertrude. I understand you’re upset. I’m sorry to be leaving too. I’ll miss everyone, especially you.” Miss Barnes wrung her hands together before she walked across to Gertie and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. The teacher’s fervor reminded Essie of the determined women in the parade near the Monument, arms linked and chanting. Women who had new shoes, read books, continued their studies. Or, at the very least, finished school.
Miss Barnes took a deep breath and looked at Essie. “I’ve known for some weeks now, though I couldn’t say. That was why I passed you the note with my new school’s information and entrance exam slips for Mrs. Murphy—it’s a shame she hasn’t had a chance to read it. I’d like Gertrude to sit the entrance exams.”
Gertie’s head shot up and she looked from Essie to Miss Barnes, astonished and elated in equal measure. “Oh, can I, Essie? Please?” Gertie clapped her hands together and her stormy expression switched to delight as she bobbed up and down in her seat.
“It’s not up to me, Gertie. We’ll have to speak with Ma . . .”
As soon as Essie said it, the smile slipped from Gertie’s face and the child closed her book, eager to be gone.
Miss Barnes walked back to her desk and reached down into her bag. As she rummaged around Essie saw green and purple ribbons and felt a flash of envy. Miss Barnes tucked them back into her bag and retrieved a crisp new envelope with neatly stenciled letters on the front: For the parents/guardians of Gertrude Murphy. She handed the envelope to Essie.
“I had Gertrude sit some short tests, in class last week when the others were taking their arithmetic test, and the results were very promising. I can’t say for certain, of course, but I know there are scholarships for a few students every year. You’d have to come to the school in Cheltenham for a weekend . . .”
Essie quietly shook her head, and Miss Barnes turned pink, realizing her mistake as soon as she said it. She shuffled some papers on her desk and avoided eye contact as she said under her breath, “I understand. Of course. How thoughtless of me.” She finished shuffling her papers and placed them in a pile on her desk. Then she ran her hands over her hair, fixing an imaginary stray strand into her bun.
Miss Barnes lowered her voice so far that Essie had to lean in to hear.
“What if I were to arrange for the entrance exams to be done here, during school hours? I could do it on a Thursday when Mr. Morton has his weekly meeting with Father McGuire.”
Gertie had finished packing her bag and stood outside the classroom window, wisps of disheveled hair moving with the breeze. Essie studied the line of Gertie: her shoulders were starting to stoop, her hair was growing dull. As the clever child was becoming a young woman, all hope was being leached away.
Essie wanted her sister to stand tall. Perhaps she could even become a teacher, like Miss Barnes.
Essie studied her own scarred palms and knew that Gertie deserved better than a life lived on the factory floor. And Essie was determined she would have it.
Essie took the letter from Miss Barnes’s hand. “Thank you. You are so kind. Our mother, she can be diffi—”
“I understand . . . Honestly, Essie. If I could take everyone in this class with me I would. But trust me when I say Gertrude is special. She has a magnificent mind. Deft and curious. Do you know, every day I leave here and I go to a meeting—”
“The suffragettes?” whispered Essie, as if she might be arrested for the mere mention of the word.
“Yes. And do you know why I go to those meetings?”
“For women to have the vote?”
“Partly. But I go to different meetings in the East End, with Sylvia Pankhurst. Miss Pankhurst is arranging for children to be cared for while women work or study. Soup kitchens. Clean clothes. Forget about what you see in the newspaper, Essie: this isn’t just girls in pretty petticoats and ribbons. We want change. Education. Choices. And the best thing I can do to further our cause is to educate girls. Those girls will educate more girls. Then they will demand a voice in parliament. Law courts. Hospitals. Anywhere you name, they will have to let women work there one day.”
Essie studied her too-big boots, hoping Miss Barnes could not see the doubt on her face. University for women? Higher office? Both seemed less likely than the vote for anyone from Essie’s part of London.
Miss Barnes placed her hands over Essie’s. They were warm.
“Please, I beg you. Find a way for your mother to sign that letter.”
“I will do my best.”
And she meant it. Gertie could finish her page of translations, spelling lists, and algebra before most children finished the first set task. When Gertie drew a portrait it was as if she captured a person’s very soul. Gertie was more than clever—there were plenty of children in the class who were sharp-tongued, could do arithmetic in their heads, or had the gift of the gab. But like Miss Barnes said, Gertie was special. Gertie’s sense of justice raged within her skinny chest like a candlewick just waiting to be lit. She belonged with Miss Barnes and those fierce women in white. Gertie could have a life beyond the factories and the stinking lanes of Southwark. Essie was going to find a way for Gertie not just to stay in school until she was fourteen, but to get the education she deserved.
Chapter 10
Kate
LONDON, PRESENT DAY
Kate had arranged to meet Bella Scott—her third cousin—for dinner at Covent Garden after work. They’d met as teenagers one summer at Rhode Island, when Bella’s mother had decided to research her family tree then proceeded to drag her reluctant children all about the UK—and occasionally the US—to meet bewildered relatives and present them with a thoughtfully bound color-coded copy.
Fortunately, Bella was close in age to Kate and Molly, and shared a love of surfing and romance novels. They’d swipe the books Bella’s mother, Mary, had bought at the secondhand bookstore and escape to the pier to suck on milkshakes and swing their sandy legs in the wind as they devoured novel after novel, comparing plot points.
Molly would criticize the plots stridently: the heroine should rescue herself, she insisted, not wait to be rescued. Bella agreed. Kate was less concerned about plotlines; she’d developed an obsession with a series of racy novels set in Tudor times. Perhaps there was something in the water that summer, as she’d made a life’s work of other people’s histories.
Bella had never summered with the Kirbys in Rhode Island again; Mary had moved up the ladder to second and first cousins in Africa and the Bahamas. But Bella, Molly, and Kate had remained firm friends, catching up whenever they found themselves in the same part of the world. Like Molly, Bella had become a lawyer, and Kate spent a few weeks in Bella’s first flat in Brixton when she’d interned at Christie’s one summer.
On this particular evening, Bella had texted to say she was running half an hour late for dinner, so Kate stood at the crowded bar of La Goccia and ordered a pink gin and tonic. The bar itself was a masterpiece—boasting oversize leaves and petals cast in bronze, with a matching bronze countertop, it was a botanical homage to the bar’s Covent Garden roots. Kate reached underneath the lip of the counter to trace her finger along the spine of an oak leaf.
She made a note to tell Marcus about this bar—it would be great to photograph the detail—but she pushed all thoughts of the photographer out of her mind as her drink arrived in a cut-glass tumbler with a sprig of rosemary for stirring.
Kate carried her drink through the after-work crowd milling about und
er the chandeliers and out to a courtyard, where she sat at a table tucked between two oversize terracotta pots sprouting ferns and magnolias. Twilight bathed the cream walls, and the summer air was thick with the smell of jasmine and japonica. It was hard to believe, in this haven of tranquility, that only feet away people were hurrying across ancient cobblestones on their way home from work or school or perhaps a shopping trip, pouring downstairs into the tube that would funnel them across London and beyond.
A waiter passed with a tray of onion and rosemary focaccia still fragrant from the pizza oven, and Kate ordered a serving for herself, along with some olives, before pulling her notebook from the tote at her feet. She hesitated for a moment, touching the second, more personal journal that lay underneath, still unopened.
Not yet.
She flipped open her workbook, leafing through the pages until she found the notes she was looking for. Underneath Essie’s sketches was a series of newspaper clippings she’d found in a manila folder titled London in her great-grandmother’s filing cabinet. She sipped on her gin as she flipped open the folder and scanned the faded newspaper clippings.
GERTRUDE FORD OPENS WOMEN’S CRISIS CENTER IN SOUTHWARK.
JUSTICE GERTRUDE FORD APPOINTED TO BENCH IN EAST LONDON FAMILY COURT. CREDITS SUFFRAGETTES, HER TEACHER AND FAMILY.
GERTRUDE FORD BEQUESTS MEANS-TESTED SCHOLARSHIP TO ST HILDA’S COLLEGE, OXFORD.
Esther Kirby had been the mouthpiece for Boston suffragettes, so it didn’t seem unusual she would collect articles from her homeland about the education of women and the suffragette movement. Or her sister.
Kate felt her throat constrict, like someone was pressing against her thorax. She struggled to swallow and allowed the conversations swilling around the courtyard to wash over her. A waitress placed a bowl of black olives and warm focaccia on the table and Kate forced herself to speak. “Thank you.”
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