A Woman's Place

by Maggie Ford

  It now sounded very silly. She slowed her words. ‘But I kept feeling him staring at me all through the speeches, but when we came out, I lost sight of him.’

  She ended as breathless as though she’d been running and sat there staring mutely at Gran, half expecting to see some revelation or other written on that smooth forehead with its greying hair swept up into an old-fashioned topknot. One hand was toying speculatively with the jet brooch at the high neck of the black blouse. As a widow she still wore black, even after four years. Looking younger than her years she might be, but at seventy she was no longer of an age to dress brightly.

  ‘And now you’ve got yourself all of a lather over an ’andsome face you saw for only a few minutes or so,’ she said slowly, then tutted. ‘Well, it do ’appen. But don’t worry, I won’t tell your mother.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Eveline hastened. ‘It’s the suffragette bit. I don’t want her and Dad to know anything about that. You know what I mean?’

  ‘Oh, I do know all right, love.’ Gran gave a titter as though seeing it as some cloak and dagger escapade. ‘I won’t say nothing about that either.’

  She was obviously enjoying every minute of it. Encouraged, Eveline found herself asking what she should do about the Saturday meeting that had been mentioned.

  Gran looked smug. ‘It ain’t for me to say, love. You’ll ’ave to make up yer own mind about that. All I say is, women are people too and one of these days they’ll ’ave to ’ave a say in their own country’s future. Not me, I’m too old and your grandad was the salt of the earth, apart from ’is gambling, but he’d ’ave said I didn’t want for nothing so why would I want to go kicking over the traces? Mind you, there’s lots of women still don’t ’ave much of a life. They need someone ready to stand up for them.’

  Emboldened, Eveline told her about the planned demonstration outside Number Ten.

  This, though, was met with a warning frown. ‘Don’t go getting yourself too mixed up in things like that, love. It’s one thing going to little meetings, but causing a disturbance – you leave that to them what enjoy such things. I say, go to your meeting on Saturday – I won’t say nothing to your mum, I promise. But I won’t smile on any more than that.’

  It was a warning that secrets only went so far. Eveline didn’t pursue it or point out that if she joined she might be expected to take part in such things. She wasn’t sure herself if this was what she wanted. Might a particular young man be at one of these meetings? Though why he would be she couldn’t imagine. Anyway, she worked all week so any weekday suffragette activity would be out of the question.

  Her umbrella held at a fighting slant against the onslaught of March going out more like a lion than a lamb, Eveline pushed along George Street.

  Counting the house numbers of the fine edifices she passed, she now wanted only to find the right place and be out of this weather. As the week had progressed, she had found the prospect of this meeting less and less attractive until she wasn’t looking forward to it at all. A wild goose chase, that’s what it was, a fool’s errand. Of course the face she hoped to see wouldn’t be there. But having come this far, it would be stupid to turn back, especially in this weather. Besides, she had promised Constance What’s-Her-Name that she’d come.

  All the way on the bus she had even felt a little sick for thinking about it, partly because if Constance wasn’t there she would know no one, and partly because the vehicle kept slowing and stopping for passengers getting on and off, and being held up by other traffic. Horse-drawn vehicles, even in congested parts, had somehow always been kinder on the stomach.

  Things had changed so fast in just six years. When she was twelve there had been hansom and hackney carriages and horse buses. Now the only horse-drawn vehicles were traders’ carts and brewers’ drays.

  Anyone could see that the day of the horse was gone for ever. Nowadays it was noisy and stank of petrol where once there had been only the clop of hooves and the shouts of drivers and it had smelled only of horses and their droppings. Though that too had stunk, it had been a natural stink.

  Engine fumes were pervasive. So was the odour of wet clothing inside the bus. She had been glad to reach her stop and inhale the fresher air of the side streets. But the empty feeling inside her hadn’t diminished. In fact the nearer she got, the worse it was becoming.

  In such atrocious weather she could have been nice and warm at home crouched over a book before the kitchen range. It was the lure that she might see him. All week the word, him, had clogged her brain, taking up her every thought until Mum had lost her temper saying she wasn’t pulling her weight with the household chores and leaving it all to May. At work Mr Prentice had towered over her accusing her of wool-gathering and pointing out that her totals were utterly incorrect.

  The trouble with Mr Prentice was that she never knew how to take him. One moment he’d stand over her, criticising, the next he’d have one hand on her shoulder, rubbing it with a sort of kneading motion as he praised something she’d done, saying what a good worker she was, what a good girl, and this week saying that if she had any problems, she only had to bring them to him and he’d be happy to help her.

  She didn’t need his help. All she wanted was to see that young man just once more and lay the small ghost he had awakened. Just once more and she would know how she really felt about him.

  Finding the house number at last, Eveline hurried up the flight of six steps and folded her umbrella as she gained the shelter of the pillared doorway, jerked the bell pull, hearing it jangle on the other side of the wide door’s stained-glass panels. The door was opened by a thin, middle-aged lady, whose expensive cream blouse and neat beige skirt caught Eveline’s eye.

  ‘Good afternoon, my dear,’ she said in a cultured but wavering tone. ‘Do come in, please. You are new, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Eveline said, stepping inside.

  ‘Well, you are very welcome. Do you know anyone here?’

  ‘Er, Constance …’ The name flooded back in a rush. ‘Mornington.’

  ‘Oh, yes. She has not arrived yet. She should be here soon. Now, the cloakroom is downstairs. Leave your outdoor things there, then come and join us.’ Eveline could hear the drone of women’s voices from a room further along the corridor.

  ‘You’ll soon get to know everyone.’ The woman turned away to answer the door, laying an apologetic hand on her arm. ‘Please excuse me, dear.’

  Two ladies were coming up the narrow but well-lit curving stairs she had indicated. Deep in conversation, they glanced at Eveline, smiled as she stood back for them to pass, and went on with their conversation. They looked so elegantly dressed that she felt conscious of her showerproof coat and galoshes, all of which smelled faintly rubbery as she negotiated the awkwardly curved stairs, holding on to the shiny brass handrail.

  The tiny cloakroom, set next to a kitchen and a storeroom, was full of women and she had to thread her way through to the row of pegs to hang up her things, dropping her wet, plain black umbrella into the stand along with several far more expensive ones. No one took the slightest notice of her, all chattering away to friends. She was grateful to disappear into one of the two toilets and be on her own for a moment or two.

  She let the minutes stretch out in blessed peace, until suddenly the door handle turned as if of its own accord. A voice said, ‘I think there’s someone already in there, Emily.’

  She recognised the voice of Constance – Connie, and tension turned to relief. Quickly adjusting her long petticoat and skirt, she tugged at the chain and opened the door, muttering an apology to the young lady in need of the place she had so selfishly occupied far too long. Connie’s small, pretty face was alight with joy. ‘Oh, you did manage to come after all. I’m so pleased!’

  All at once she was part of this meeting, introduced to this one and that, glad to see that not all of the twenty or so ladies were as wealthy as she had expected, with not the tiniest hint of class distinction. In no time she began to fe
el at home. If this was what being a suffragette meant, women helping other women of all walks of life, then her fears had been unfounded. It was turning into a delightful afternoon as she chatted, told people where she came from, what her parents did, listened to various exploits – one woman had climbed the Alps, another had had a brush with a minor MP at a Christmas party when he’d insulted her to her face; she’d given as good as she’d got, proving herself to be the more intelligent.

  ‘And all without raising my voice,’ she said with quiet satisfaction. ‘I left him utterly lost for words and blustering.’

  A scheme was to be put before their branch committee for another militant attendance outside the House of Commons, everyone talking of the huge April rally of workers and professionals in Eaton Square.

  ‘The next meeting here,’ announced the lady in charge, ‘will be graced by no less a person than Mrs Edith How-Martyn, who is our joint Honorary Secretary and, as you may know, one of the first and former members of the WSPU to serve time in Holloway three years ago after being arrested and charged for obstruction outside the House of Commons. She will tell us all about her experiences.’

  ‘Will you be coming next week?’ Connie asked as the meeting broke up after two hours of tea, cake and conversation.

  Eveline nodded. She rather fancied hearing someone who had been imprisoned for her beliefs. But more, she had been disappointed to find no sign of the young man she’d sought, so perhaps next week he would appear.

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ Connie cried. ‘So you have decided to join us, become a suffragette. Everyone, listen …’ Raising her voice, she swept out an arm to attract the room’s attention, the other holding Eveline’s hand. ‘We have a new member. Isn’t that splendid?’

  Too late to wriggle out of it now as women and the three men here, supporters of the cause, came to congratulate her as Connie led her to the registration desk.

  ‘I need your name and address, my dear.’ The woman in charge of the register smiled up at her. ‘So we can send you a news-sheet and literature.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Eveline’s face registered her horror. ‘My family don’t know.’

  The woman was immediately sympathetic. ‘I understand. I will make a note warning that you must not be sent any literature as yet. If you attend regularly you can pick it all up here.’

  Reassured, Eveline bent and put her name to the form being handed to her, straightening up to see Connie’s face glowing with triumph.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said, the first words she’d used when they’d first met, and just as warm. ‘Don’t worry, Eveline, everyone knows that we can’t all be free to follow our hearts.’

  Eveline was already having misgivings about what she had done, and now was hardly able to retract. ‘My father mustn’t ever know about this,’ she said so that Connie would be left in no doubt that what she was doing was not to be taken lightly. It was all very well for people like Connie with money who could do what they liked. ‘My father hates the suffragettes.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Connie said solemnly, the admission taking away Eveline’s breath. ‘He too knows nothing of what I am doing.’

  Chapter Three

  From the way Eveline Fenton had looked at her, Connie was sure she had no idea women of upper-middle-class families could be as suppressed by the head of the house as those of the lower classes. Intimidation wasn’t the sole property of the poor; an otherwise respectable Harley Street physician such as her father could browbeat his wife, as could any common labourer. Not that he had ever struck her mother, but he had the ability to dominate and subdue her to silence with a single disapproving look.

  She could open Eveline’s eyes about her home life, though she preferred not to. Explaining how it was would have given her quite the wrong impression, for he was a good husband and father, more than adequately providing for his family, seeing to the education of his two daughters as well as his two sons and taking his responsibilities seriously and soberly. Yet his word was law by sheer virtue of doing these things.

  On the train home, she felt Eveline had much to learn if she thought being wealthy and privileged was a bed of roses. Eveline had gone to great pains to let it be known that she wasn’t particularly poor even though she came from the poorer East End, her father a shopkeeper.

  Connie smiled. Tradespeople. Father looked on tradespeople as on the same level as servants. He’d never admit that suffragettes saw women as equal, certainly in their fight against political exclusion.

  With the train puffing slowly into Perivale, Connie got up from her seat to be jostled by a man in a hurry to alight before anyone else stood up. Others were more considerate; one even lifted an apologetic hand to the brim of his bowler as his shoulder brushed hers, so she nodded acknowledgement of the young man’s polite gesture. Oddly enough, it was exactly what her father would have done were he to accidentally brush against a woman, exuding politeness, charming her with his manner. At home he was a different man.

  Home was a short walk from the station. The rain had stopped, the sky clearing, but it had become colder and she put on a spurt to be home all the quicker. Also she knew she was later returning home than intended.

  Her mother was already in the hall, having heard the doorbell. As the housemaid, whose given name was Victoria but with Father thinking it too grand for a servant was called Agnes, admitted her, Connie noticed the anxious look on her mother’s face.

  ‘Where have you been, Constance?’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘You should have been home over an hour ago. Your father has been asking where you were. We know nothing of this friend you said you were seeing.’

  ‘I told you, Mummy,’ Connie said, taking off her hat and gloves and handing them with her coat to Agnes, who hurried away with them. ‘An old school friend I’d arranged to meet for lunch in town. A sort of reunion.’

  Her mother’s sceptical expression made her squirm, or perhaps it was her own guilt at lying. She was in fact running out of excuses to cover these suffragette meetings of hers. If she said it was a ladies’ club, Father would be asking its name and checking whether it was suitable. Sometimes it was worse than being a prisoner.

  Eighteen months since leaving Griggs’s School for Young Ladies, to suddenly have this old school friend popping up, what other excuse could she have made than a reunion? Her parents knew all her friends and Father would contact any she named to corroborate her tale. It demonstrated the extent of the control he exercised over his daughters. At nineteen she was still answerable to him. Were she twenty-one, which would not be for fifteen months, not until June of next year, it would make little difference while under his roof. Her only hope of escape would be marriage but even then she’d probably only be swapping her father’s domination for that of her husband. Things would have to change very drastically before any wife would ever see herself as her own mistress.

  Of course, at first she would be glad to be under her husband’s protection but in time he’d expect it and that would be a different matter. What if she became like her mother, the subdued wife hanging on her husband’s every word – if she didn’t kill him first. Anyway, as far as she was concerned, nineteen was too young to marry, even though her father already assumed that she and Simon Whitemore would eventually tie the knot.

  Simon had been introduced to her by her father at her coming-out party last year, and he was now regarded as her chosen suitor. The son of a long-standing friend and colleague of her father and a medical man like himself, Connie had to admit he was quite handsome and sociable. She had liked him at first but lately found his serious nature quite boring. He was too much in the mould of her father for her liking and she could visualise herself ending up exactly like her mother if she didn’t watch out.

  She hadn’t yet told Simon how she felt, not wanting to hurt his feelings. But now he’d begun talking seriously of marriage, his attentions becoming steadily more purposeful, and with her father’s mind set on an engagement in the not-too-distant future, she saw herse
lf fighting a losing battle if she didn’t make a stand very soon.

  ‘Where is Father?’ she asked, hastily changing the subject before her mother’s questioning gaze.

  ‘In his study. He has had a busy surgery. He is asking why you are so late coming home. He wasn’t happy with you meeting someone neither of us knows. It could have been simply anyone.’

  ‘It wasn’t anyone, Mummy, it was an old school friend.’

  The lie made her squirm as she moved past her mother towards the drawing room. The trouble with lies was that they always needed expanding to make them plausible. ‘We had so much to talk about that we quite forgot the time.’

  She was about to add that the train was also delayed, but that would have had Father telephoning the railway station asking the reason why. She would have been found out in a trice. One lie too many was never advisable.

  ‘Where did you go after lunch to have made you so late home?’ her mother persisted, following her into the room.

  Connie thought quickly. She was running out of excuses. ‘We visited the British Museum.’ There came a temptation to enthuse on the museum’s treasures, but again that would be overdoing it. Mother was still frowning.

  ‘How did you come to contact each other after so long a time?’

  ‘I bumped into her in London several weeks ago. She wrote to suggest we meet for lunch.’

  It was a silly mistake. The frown on her mother’s elegantly narrow face deepened. ‘Your father has seen nothing addressed to you.’

  He read all mail that came into the house. Bentick, their butler, would bring the post and morning paper to the breakfast room. Father would open each envelope with a silver paper knife, putting aside bills that needed to be paid or that dealt with his practice. He would open any addressed to her mother, taking it as his right. The family would sit in silence, anyone daring to speak receiving a sharp, reprimanding glower. As children she, her sister Verity, or her two brothers, Denzil and Herbert, had been ordered to their room without breakfast before now. Meals too were eaten in silence unless he spoke, exacting a response. Mother seemed quite content, or perhaps was resigned to her correspondence being read, often aloud, usually invitations to social gatherings and such, or from her only living, relative, Aunt Mildred.