by Megan Rix
‘You’ll make a good nurse one day, Daisy,’ Nurse Pine said approvingly.
‘Thank you.’ Daisy smiled. ‘I like to help where I can.’
‘She’s got a nurse’s hands,’ the bruised lady said.
‘You know we can’t keep it,’ Daisy said, when she finally came over to Alfie. Rascal looked up at Daisy and wagged her tail but Daisy didn’t stroke her. ‘What did you bring it here for?’
‘She,’ Alfie said. ‘Not “it”. Her name’s Rascal.’
Daisy opened her mouth but before she could say anything, the room suddenly went quiet.
All eyes were on the doorway, where Emmeline Pankhurst now stood.
Rascal immediately ran over to her, wagging her tail with delight as if the two of them had known each other for years.
‘Rascal, come back,’ Alfie called, running after her.
But Rascal didn’t listen. She stood on her hind legs so she could stretch up to Mrs Parkhurst and wagged her tail wildly.
‘Oh, how delightful,’ Mrs Pankhurst said in her soft, lilting voice.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Pankhurst,’ Alfie said, very embarrassed.
Mrs Pankhurst shook her head. ‘Such a happy little thing and just what I needed to see on such a sad, black day. All we wanted to do was speak to the prime minister, in the name of freedom, but Mr Churchill saw to it that we were not allowed to do so.’
Rascal sat and put out her paw.
‘What’s his name?’ Mrs Pankhurst asked Alfie.
‘Rascal,’ Alfie told her. ‘And she’s a girl puppy, not a boy.’
‘I told him he couldn’t keep her,’ Daisy said, coming to join them. ‘It’s just not practical. Not without Mr and Mrs Goulden’s permission.’
Alfie knew in his heart that Daisy was right: it wasn’t fair to just bring Rascal home – although he was sure that Mr and Mrs Goulden would love her once they met her.
To his surprise, Mrs Pankhurst didn’t agree with Daisy. As she stroked Rascal, she said thoughtfully: ‘A boy with a puppy. Now what could appear more innocent than that? No one will suspect them of being spies for our cause, with secret messages to deliver, will they? I think the puppy is a splendid addition to the WSPU.’
‘If you’re sure Mr and Mrs Goulden won’t mind,’ Daisy said doubtfully.
‘I am sure. Very sure,’ Mrs Pankhurst told her.
It was all Alfie could do to stop himself from cheering. He scooped a surprised Rascal up in his arms as Daisy poked her tongue out at him. Rascal was going to be his puppy!
Chapter 4
NOVEMBER 1910
Rascal didn’t take her eyes off Daisy as she added the poached eggs to a small bowl of chopped bread and mixed them together in Nurse Pine’s kitchen. Two hundred suffragettes had been hurt in the confrontation with the police the day before and the most badly injured had come to stay in her nursing home in Pembridge Gardens, Notting Hill. Alfie and Daisy, as well as Mrs Pankhurst and her sister Mary, had gone there to help too.
‘Go on, then!’ Daisy said to Rascal when she put the bowl on the tiled floor.
Rascal gobbled up the eggs and bread in ten seconds flat.
‘I bet you didn’t even taste it,’ scolded Daisy as Rascal gazed up with a meaningful look in her big brown eyes, head to one side, one ear up and one ear down, hoping for some more.
Alfie smiled to himself as he finished his own breakfast. Rascal certainly did have a good appetite!
Alfie liked staying at the nursing home because Nurse Pine had been so kind to Harry when Harry was sick and Mrs Pankhurst was abroad. She’d even let Alfie stay there during the Christmas holidays so Harry would have a friend with him.
‘Alfie, I want you to buy a copy of all the different newspapers so I may see what the press have written about yesterday’s events,’ Mrs Pankhurst said, coming in through the swing door to the kitchen.
‘Yes, Mrs Pankhurst,’ Alfie said, and she handed him some money.
Rascal wagged her tail as she followed him out into Pembridge Gardens. It had been very warm indoors but outside it was nice and cool. She sniffed at the interesting smells as they made their way along the quiet early-morning street.
‘This way,’ Alfie said, and he pushed his cold hands into his pockets.
The old newspaper seller on the corner gave Rascal a stroke and a bit of crust from his bread-and-dripping sandwich. She licked his hand to say thank you.
‘Now, which paper are you after this fine crisp Saturday morning?’ he asked Alfie, rubbing his hands together to try to warm them up.
‘I need a copy of all of them,’ Alfie said, and he hid a smile at the man’s look of surprise.
‘Do you indeed? Well, that is a lot of reading!’
Alfie watched the newspaper seller gather up a copy of every newspaper he had for sale.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
He’d just handed over the money for them when a truck juddered to a stop and a man wearing a battered bowler hat jumped out.
‘I need all your copies of today’s Daily Mirror before anyone sees them,’ he said.
‘That’ll be a lot of ha’pennies,’ the old newspaper seller said with a chuckle.
‘Why are you buying them all?’ Alfie asked the man, while Rascal sniffed at his boot.
‘Because of the photograph on the front page. Mr Churchill thinks it could give the wrong impression of the government,’ the man replied.
Rascal had had enough of sniffing his boot and put a paw out to the newspaper seller instead, hoping for more sandwich, but he was too busy collecting up all the copies of the Daily Mirror to notice her.
‘Is that all of them?’ the man asked.
‘All apart from the one I just sold to this lad,’ the old newspaper seller said, nodding at Alfie. ‘Never had as good a morning for newspaper sales before!’
The man in the bowler hat turned to Alfie. ‘Hand it over,’ he demanded.
But Alfie had bought the newspaper for Mrs Pankhurst. He’d paid for it and he didn’t want to give it back. He shook his head and the man looked angry.
‘Give it to me – now!’
Alfie shook his head again and took a step back. The man made a grab for all the papers Alfie had under his arm, but Rascal got between them and growled and barked and jumped up, flailing her tiny paws.
‘Get off, you stupid mutt!’
Alfie turned and ran off down the street and Rascal followed, hot on his heels.
‘Come back here!’ the man yelled.
Alfie heard the truck’s noisy motor starting up and he dashed down the steps to the basement of a house, with Rascal scampering behind. Peeping out from behind the railing, they watched as the truck drove slowly and noisily down the road, stopping now and then as the driver looked for them.
Once Alfie couldn’t see or hear the truck any more, he and Rascal ran up the steps and raced all the way back to the nursing home.
‘Well, that was certainly quick!’ Emmeline broke into a smile as Alfie and Rascal burst into the drawing room, where she and Mary were having a cup of tea.
Both Alfie and Rascal were panting hard.
‘Hello, Rascal,’ Mary said, patting her slender knee, and Rascal ran over to her.
Mary poured some of her tea into the saucer and Rascal lapped it up while Alfie told Mrs Pankhurst what had happened.
‘Which newspaper was it that the man was told to buy?’ she asked him, staring at the pile of papers Alfie had put on the small coffee table.
‘The Daily Mirror.’
Rascal thought the tassels on the rug looked very interesting and started to tug at them with her sharp puppy teeth.
‘No, Rascal!’ Alfie said, stopping her just in time. ‘Rugs are not for chewing.’
Rascal gave his hand a lick as Mrs Pankhurst sorted through the papers and then gave a gasp.
Alfie and Mary leant forward to see.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ Mary said, as they all stared at the photograph on the front page of the Daily Mirror. It showed a s
uffragette lying curled up on the road during the previous day’s fray. She was trying to protect her face while a policeman loomed over her and another man tried to protect her.
‘Do you know who it is?’ Mary asked. ‘I can’t tell because she’s covering her face.’
‘It could be Ada Wright, judging by her build,’ Emmeline said. ‘But the man next to her looks like Ernestine Mills’s husband, so it must be Ernestine.’
‘Looking at it you can almost feel the violence and terror of the day,’ Mary said.
Mrs Pankhurst agreed. ‘This picture is worth more than a thousand words. Thank you for getting the paper, Alfie, and I’m sorry for the danger you and Rascal found yourselves in.’
‘That’s OK,’ Alfie said. He was going to say he didn’t mind danger, but Mrs Pankhurst was already scanning the rest of the papers to see what they had to say. Most of them had reported the terrible day as nothing more than a scuffle where a few women fainted.
‘“The arrival of the Home Secretary created a stir, but Mr Churchill strode calmly through the gates as Big Ben struck twelve,” ’ Mrs Pankhurst read aloud.
‘Huh!’ said Mary.
‘“One unlucky woman was accidentally hit by a car.”’
‘Unlucky! More like deliberately struck,’ said Mary.
‘“The marches on Parliament went on for six hours before the battered and bedraggled survivors finally went back to Caxton Hall.” ’
The two sisters looked at each other.
‘Thank goodness the Daily Mirror is showing it for the horrendous and violent event it truly was,’ Mary said.
‘No wonder the government doesn’t want this photograph to be seen,’ Mrs Pankhurst added.
More than a hundred suffragettes had been arrested the day before and were due in court that day. One of them was Mary, who was looking very pale. Alfie wasn’t sure if she was ill or if it was the worry of going to court and maybe being sent to prison. When Mrs Pankhurst had been sentenced to prison in 1908, she had been held in solitary confinement, which she’d found terribly hard.
Mrs Pankhurst took her sister’s hand.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be with you in court. You’re strong and you’ll survive, whatever happens.’
‘I’d gladly suffer anything for the sake of freedom,’ Mary said. ‘I know our cause is right.’
Rascal had curled up and gone to sleep on one of the newspapers that Mrs Pankhurst had dropped on the floor.
‘Alfie, I want you to show this photograph to as many of these women as you can,’ Mrs Pankhurst said, writing urgently on a piece of paper. ‘They’ll let the others know that their suffering yesterday and possible imprisonment today wasn’t in vain. We need the press on our side more than ever, so everyone can truly see what’s going on and how we’re being treated.’
She handed Alfie the piece of paper.
The first name on the list was Flora Drummond – The General.
‘You’ll find her organizing the cycling suffragettes over at Sloane Square. Miss Billinghurst will probably be there too. Every Saturday morning they head out into the countryside to campaign and recruit more members,’ Mrs Pankhurst told him.
She put the precious newspaper with its front-page photograph inside two pieces of cardboard and Alfie tucked it inside his coat.
Daisy laughed when she came in to collect the teacups and saw Alfie stuffing cardboard inside his coat. But she understood how important it was to take good care of the newspaper once she’d heard what had happened.
‘There might not be many copies left if Mr Churchill’s orders are obeyed and all of them get destroyed,’ she said.
‘Cardboard makes good armour,’ Alfie told her.
Daisy nodded. ‘The suffragettes could have used some cardboard armour yesterday. I’ve used up bottles and bottles of arnica on all their bruises.’
‘Metal armour would have been even better,’ Alfie said. ‘Although not so easy to move about in.’
‘It’s better for everyone if our supporters are simply arrested rather than being hurt,’ Mrs Pankhurst said.
‘The women didn’t stand a chance. How could anyone expect them to fight?’ Alfie asked.
‘And yet I have seen women fighting,’ Mrs Pankhurst told him. ‘One woman, in particular, who could take on a man twice her size, and throw him over her shoulder before he was even aware of what was about to happen.’
‘I’d like to have seen that,’ Daisy said with a grin.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Mrs Pankhurst said, looking thoughtful. ‘More training in the art of self-defence is just what we need. Off you go with that precious newspaper now, Alfie.’
‘Come on, Rascal,’ Alfie said, and off they went.
Chapter 5
NOVEMBER 1910
Rascal danced round in little circles of excitement as they went through the huge wrought-iron gates of Hyde Park and then she ran off to sniff at the nearest tree.
The last time Alfie had been to Hyde Park was in the summer holidays, when he’d helped at one of the many Votes for Women rallies and marches. On that hot day, forty thousand people had gathered in the park to hear Mrs Pankhurst and the leaders of the different groups arguing for voting rights. It wasn’t just women who wanted the vote. Most men couldn’t vote either and wanted suffrage too. To have the right to vote you had to be over twenty-one and own your own property or pay rent of over ten pounds a year. ‘It shouldn’t just be rich and middle-class men who can vote,’ a miner from South Wales had told the crowd. ‘Everyone should have the right!’ And Alfie and the rest of the men and women had cheered.
Rascal chased after a squirrel that ran up a tree and looked down at her from the top branches. It was joined by a second squirrel and Alfie was sure that, if squirrels could laugh, they’d be laughing at poor Rascal down on the grass looking up at them with her tongue hanging out.
‘They won’t come down until we’ve gone,’ he told Rascal, and pressed on. After one last look at the squirrels, she ran after him.
There were only a few other dogs to sniff at in the park because it was still early, but Rascal thought the swans were interesting – until one of them hissed at her and she dashed back to Alfie. The geese flapped their wings and sped into the water, honking and squawking, when she tried to say hello to them, and the flock of pigeons pecking at some crusts of bread rose as one before she could reach them.
Rascal quickly gobbled down some of the bread before Alfie called to her: ‘Come on, you’ve only just had breakfast! Rascal!’
Rascal wolfed down one, two, three more bits of bread – and then she came running.
Alfie wanted to walk quickly through the park but Rascal wanted to play.
She suddenly disappeared into a bush and came out with a ball in her mouth and wagged her tail at Alfie.
‘Good find!’ he said. He threw the ball and Rascal sped after it, picked it up in her jaws, ran back to Alfie and dropped it at his feet. She looked up at him, her brown eyes clearly saying she’d like the ball thrown again, please.
Alfie threw the ball all the way across the park until they came to the gate at the end of Serpentine Walk.
‘Not far to Sloane Square now,’ Alfie told Rascal as they headed down Sloane Street.
As they got closer, it was easy to spot the cycling suffragettes wearing the purple, white and green colours of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Many of the thirty or so women were wearing WSPU sashes and others held WSPU bags. Most of them had VOTES FOR WOMEN written on their hats. There was lots of laughing as they got ready for their excursion and The General had the loudest laugh of all as she strode about in her officer’s peaked cap and military jacket, organizing everyone.
Rascal raced up to her with her tail wagging.
‘Well, hello there,’ The General said. ‘What a sweet-smelling wee doggie you are now! Fine-looking puppy, Alfie. What’s her name again?’
‘Rascal,’ he said.
‘And I
bet she is a little rascal!’ The General laughed as Rascal wagged her tail, and Alfie laughed too.
Rascal made her way round the other suffragettes so she could be stroked by them as well.
Mrs Pankhurst had told Alfie how she and her family used to be keen cyclists. ‘Being on a bicycle gives a woman a sense of freedom and adventure,’ she’d said with a smile.
All of the suffragettes’ bicycles were decorated with purple, white and green rosettes, ribbons and flags.
‘Mrs Pankhurst wanted you to see this,’ Alfie said to The General, pulling the newspaper from his coat.
Everyone gathered round to look at the front page.
When Miss Billinghurst arrived in her tricycle wheelchair, Rascal hopped up into her lap.
‘Sorry about that!’ Alfie said, running to grab Rascal.
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Miss Billinghurst said. ‘I just wish we could take her with us on our jaunt out to West Wickham to recruit more members for the WSPU. The more women we can get pushing Parliament to give us the vote the better!’
‘Rascal needs to go with Alfie. They’ve got a very important job to do,’ The General said, showing her the picture of the suffragette lying on the ground. ‘The government’s trying to get hold of all the copies of the paper to stop people from seeing what really happened yesterday.’
‘Who’s next on your list, Alfie?’ Miss Billinghurst asked.
Alfie gulped when he saw the next name.
‘“Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, Faraday House, Hampton Court”,’ he read aloud. Would he really be permitted to meet a princess?
‘Hampton Court!’ The General tutted loudly. ‘It’ll take you all day to walk there from here.’ And she strode over to the railings where the decorated bikes were resting.
‘The princess lives in a house Queen Victoria gave her,’ Miss Billinghurst told Alfie, as she gave Rascal, still on her lap, a stroke. ‘It’s called Faraday House, after Professor Faraday, who invented electricity, and it’s on the road opposite Hampton Court Green.’
Still worried about meeting a princess, Alfie bit his bottom lip and watched The General taking the suffragette ribbons and rosettes off one of the bicycles.