by Megan Rix
‘Come on, Rascal – it’s fun!’ Alfie called to her.
But Rascal wasn’t at all sure about that.
‘Let’s go right in!’ Manna said to Alfie. ‘It doesn’t matter if our clothes get wet, they’ll dry in the sun.’
‘I don’t want to go in too far,’ Alfie said, as Rascal barked at them from the beach.
‘Why not?’ Manna asked him.
‘Because I can’t swim!’
‘Then you must learn before you go to war, or at least learn how not to drown,’ Manna said, scooping up a great armful of water and splashing Alfie with it. Alfie laughed and splashed him back. The two boys were soon in the middle of a wild water fight.
Rascal’s head turned from one to the other, then she ran up and down the beach following the flying water. Finally it was too much and she jumped through the waves to try to reach Alfie. The next moment she was swimming and the sea didn’t seem quite so bad after all.
She gave the water a quick lap but it didn’t taste nice at all.
‘Just copy Rascal,’ Manna told Alfie, as he watched Rascal doggy-paddling.
Manna held Alfie under his tummy and Alfie stretched his arms out and lifted his legs off the bottom, making sure he kept his head out of the water
‘That’s it! I won’t let you go until you’re ready,’ said Manna.
Soon Alfie was doggy-paddling like Rascal and laughing at himself – until he gulped down some water by mistake. It might not be great swimming but at least it would stop him from drowning.
Dogs weren’t allowed inside the majestic Brighton Pavilion but Rascal was allowed on the pier that stretched far out into the sea.
‘One day I will go to India and see a true maharajah’s palace for myself,’ Manna said.
Through the slatted wooden pier Rascal could see the waves below her, but Alfie didn’t seem frightened and so she wasn’t frightened either.
Best of all were the fried fish and chips that Manna bought with some of the princess’s money. Rascal gobbled hers up and then looked hungrily at the boys’ portions. She barked at the seagulls who came to see if there was any for them.
There was just enough time for an ice cream before they had to catch the train. Rascal got to have a whole vanilla ice cream all to herself, which she thought was very fine indeed. Although, once she’d finished hers, she stared meaningfully at Alfie and Manna, who were still eating theirs.
‘I don’t think Rascal ever gets full up,’ Alfie said, as he gave her the last of his ice cream, and Manna laughed.
When they got back to Faraday House, it was time for Alfie to leave Rascal with Manna and Princess Sophia.
‘You be good now,’ Alfie told Rascal, kissing the top of her furry head. He felt as if his heart was breaking, but he didn’t want to seem sad in front of Rascal, because she wouldn’t know what was happening or why he was sad, and he wanted her to be happy. ‘You’re the best dog in the world, you know. But while I’m gone no licking the food from people’s plates when they’re not looking!’
He was going to miss her so much.
‘Take good care of her,’ he said to Manna. Although he knew he would.
Alfie ran out to his bicycle and cycled back to London with tears streaming down his face.
The warship taking the soldiers across the sea to France rolled on the swell of the high waves. To the right and left of him Alfie saw and heard other new recruits being seasick. His stomach churned.
‘Look towards the horizon,’ the soldier standing next to him said, pulling a paper bag of crystallized stem ginger from his pocket and offering it to Alfie. ‘Focus on that.’
Alfie took a piece of ginger and sucked on it while doing his best to stare as hard as he could out to sea, but he still felt very sick.
‘I’m Tom,’ the soldier said. ‘Tom Smith. You look familiar. Don’t I know you?’
Alfie looked at the man who was a few years older than him and shook his head. He didn’t recognize him.
‘I’m Alfie,’ Alfie gulped.
He was glad Manna had taught him to swim. At least if the ship went down he’d have a chance of surviving. He bit his bottom lip and willed the French coast to appear.
At last they reached dry land and soon the seasickness didn’t seem so bad compared with the stench of the muddy, water-logged trenches they had to dig out and live in. Or the threat of attack from the other side that they faced day and night, from both soldiers with weapons and the deadly mustard gas.
When Alfie wrote home he didn’t tell Daisy or Manna how bad it truly was in the trenches. He didn’t want them to know about the other soldiers, just like him, some of them not even as old as he was, who’d already been killed or badly injured. There was nothing Daisy or Manna could do to help and he didn’t want to worry them. All he could do was see the war through to the end and hopefully, one day, get to go home.
Tom didn’t have anyone to write to, so Alfie said he could write to Daisy as well. She was helping Mrs Pankhurst’s daughter Sylvia in the East End of London. When war was declared, prices had gone up so much that poor people couldn’t afford to buy food and were starving. Sylvia had set up a mother-and-baby clinic, a factory making toys and clothes where unemployed women could work, and a restaurant where meals cost twopence for adults and a penny for children, and you could have a free meal if you had no money at all. Plus it provided soup and a chunk of bread every evening for one penny.
‘Good thick soup too – not like we used to have in the workhouse. I feel I’m really helping people in need,’ Daisy wrote, and she’d drawn a smiling face at the end of her letter.
When Alfie went away, Rascal lay by the kitchen door of Faraday House and waited for him to come back. Just like she’d done in the old days when Alfie had gone to school. But this time Alfie didn’t come back at night and he still wasn’t there in the morning. Rascal kept on waiting.
One day Daisy came to see her. Rascal was wildly excited and ran round and round, checking behind her to see if Alfie was there – but he wasn’t. Rascal grabbed her ball from her basket, dropped it at Daisy’s feet, wagged her tail and looked up at Alfie’s sister. But Daisy wasn’t ready to play yet.
‘Come on,’ she said, clipping Rascal’s lead to her purple, white and green collar. There are some friends I want you to meet.’
The children at Sylvia Pankhurst’s school in Bow were very excited to meet Rascal and Rascal was very happy to meet them. Her tail wagged and wagged.
‘Why’s your dog got a purple, white and green collar?’ a six-year-old boy called Jack wanted to know.
‘It’s the colours of the Women’s Social and Political Union party,’ Daisy told him as she stroked Rascal. ‘Purple for dignity, white for purity and green for hope.’
‘Would Rascal like to play with my ball?’ Jack asked.
Rascal jumped up and wagged her tail as soon as she saw the ball. They went to play in the garden at the back of the toy factory.
‘You remind me of my brother Alfie,’ Daisy told Jack. ‘Rascal’s his dog, really, but Alfie’s fighting at the front. He misses her terribly.’
‘I wish I could have a dog,’ Jack said.
Daisy smiled. ‘Just like Alfie.’
Before Daisy took Rascal back to Hampton Court, she took her into the toy factory to meet the women working there. Rascal sniffed at the smell of paint that was being painted on the wooden toys and was given a stroke by a lady fixing arms and legs on to dolls. A woman who’d been stuffing a teddy bear looked at Rascal and then quickly started drawing on a piece of paper.
‘We don’t have a dog toy yet,’ she said. ‘But it wouldn’t be so different from making a teddy bear, and Rascal’s the perfect model!’
Manna wrote to tell Alfie that the princess had taken Rascal with her to visit the wounded Indian soldiers who were now in hospital at the Brighton Pavilion.
‘She said Rascal was extremely well behaved and the soldiers very much enjoyed meeting her in the grounds of the hospital.’
Often Alfie dreamed that he heard Rascal barking, and he’d open his eyes ready to jump up and see what was wrong, but then he’d remember she wasn’t with him. She was back home in England. Safe. Far away from the threat of mustard gas and the enemy. He was very glad about that, although he wished she was with him every day. Not just because he missed her terribly but because of the rat problem. Rats were everywhere in the trenches and if you felt something tickling your face late at night, like as not it was one of them.
‘One pair of rats can produce nine hundred babies a year,’ Tom told him, which didn’t help at all.
The best time of the day was when the letters from home were given out.
‘Daisy says she’s a suffragette,’ Tom said one day when he’d read his letter from her.
Alfie nodded. ‘I used to be Mrs Pankhurst’s messenger boy, with my dog, Rascal,’ he told him.
‘So that’s where I’ve seen you before!’ Tom said, suddenly remembering. ‘At Edith Garrud’s martial-arts class. That tiny woman took me totally by surprise. One minute I was standing there and the next I was lying on the ground looking up at the ceiling, with no idea what had just happened!’
Alfie laughed. ‘I remember that! It was the first time I met Mrs Garrud – fierce lady!’
‘Didn’t look like she’d put up with any nonsense,’ Tom agreed.
‘My sister Daisy was the one who helped you up,’ Alfie said.
‘Oh, so that was your Daisy,’ Tom said, and he gave a smile as he shook his head. ‘Small world.’
‘Daisy was one of Mrs Pankhurst’s Amazons,’ Alfie told him.
They’d read in the newspapers that were brought over from England how Mrs Pankhurst had been to Russia and met the soldiers of the Women’s Battalion of Death unit, who were off to fight at the front for their country.
‘I bet Daisy would have joined that if she could,’ Alfie said, and Tom nodded. But they were both secretly glad that she couldn’t.
‘Wouldn’t wish going to war on anyone,’ Tom said.
‘No,’ Alfie agreed. He was very glad that Manna still hadn’t reached the regulation five feet three inches.
It was not until 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, that the fighting was finally over. Alfie was desperately looking forward to seeing Rascal again. Four long years of war had kept him apart from his best friend.
When he and Tom got off the train at the station, he was overjoyed to see Daisy and Mrs Pankhurst waiting for them.
‘Where’s Rascal and Manna?’ he asked. He’d told Tom so much about Rascal that he couldn’t wait for him to meet her.
‘We’re going in the car to see them,’ Mrs Pankhurst told them as Alfie and Tom put their kit bags in the boot.
When they got to Faraday House, Alfie saw Rascal lying on the lawn in the sunshine being stroked by Manna. There were three puppies that looked a lot like her and a bit like Princess Sophia’s Pomeranians playing together close by.
‘Rascal!’ Alfie said softly.
It was loud enough for Rascal to hear. She looked over at the visitors and then did a double take and gave a yelp of pure joy when she saw Alfie. She’d waited for him for so long. The next moment she’d scrambled to her feet and was racing over to him. She leapt into his arms, almost knocking him over, and licked and licked his face.
Alfie could feel her heart beating very fast and she made happy little crying sounds.
‘I’ll never go away again,’ he promised.
The three puppies came running over too, wanting to know what their mum was doing and what all the fuss was about.
Alfie knelt down to say hello to them all while still stroking Rascal.
‘Fancy you being a mummy dog now,’ he said, as the three puppies crawled into his lap and he pressed his face to Rascal’s. ‘I bet you’re a very good mum.’
‘All of us were very surprised when she had puppies,’ Manna said. ‘What are you going to name them? There’s one boy and two girls.’
Alfie looked over at Mrs Pankhurst and knew exactly what the puppies should be called.
‘The little boy I’m naming Harry,’ he said, and Mrs Pankhurst gasped. ‘And the little girls should be Mary and Emily.’
Now Mrs Pankhurst was nodding.
‘Thank you, Alfie,’ she said softly. ‘They are beautiful names.’
Rascal came over to Mrs Pankhurst and she gave her a stroke. ‘Look at you, all grown up with a family of your own,’ she said. ‘It seems like no time at all since you were a little pup.’
‘Hello, Rascal,’ Tom said, crouching down to greet her.
Rascal sniffed at him, wagged her tail, gave one of her distinctive Staffie grins, ran into a nearby bush, came out with a ball, dropped it at his feet and looked up at him with her head tilted to one side.
‘Looks like you have her approval,’ Daisy said with a smile.
‘We’ve met before,’ Tom told her.
A few months later the law was changed. Women aged over thirty who owned property were given the right to vote. This right was also given to all men over twenty-one, or over nineteen if they’d been in the war.
‘So you’ll be able to vote too now, Alfie,’ Daisy told him.
‘You did it!’ Alfie congratulated Mrs Pankhurst.
But Mrs Pankhurst said it was only the beginning. ‘One day I want all men and women to have equal rights.’
And Alfie was sure, if anyone could make it happen, it was Emmeline Pankhurst.
Glossary
Ada Wright: one of the suffragettes who took part in the Black Friday protest outside Parliament on 18 November 1910.
Adela Pankhurst (19 June 1885–23 May 1961): third daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette and political activist, who moved to Australia in 1914.
Annie Kenney (13 September 1879–9 July 1953): suffragette from a poor family, who started work in a cotton mill in Yorkshire at the age of ten. She was one of the first suffragettes to be imprisoned, in 1905, for demanding women’s right to vote at a political rally in Manchester. She became deputy leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1912.
Bodyguard unit: the WSPU trained thirty women in martial arts and self-defence to protect suffragettes from re-arrest under the Cat and Mouse Act. Newspaper reports called them the ‘Jiujitsuffragettes’ and the ‘Amazons’.
Bryant and May: British company which made matches. In the nineteenth century, its factory in the East End of London employed mostly women and teenage girls, who worked fourteen-hour days in bad conditions and for very little money. The match girls’ strike of 1888 led to better working conditions.
Cat and Mouse Act: popular name for the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, 1913. It meant that suffragettes who went on hunger strike in prison were released when they became sick. When they got better, they were taken back to prison to finish their sentences.
Caxton Hall, Westminster: public hall used by the WSPU from 1907 to hold a ‘Women’s Parliament’ each year, followed by a procession to the Houses of Parliament to present a petition to the prime minister.
Christabel Pankhurst (22 September 1880–13 February 1958): oldest daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst; together they founded the WSPU in 1903. From 1912 to 1913 Christabel directed the WSPU from exile in France.
David Lloyd George (17 January 1863–26 March 1945): Chancellor of the Exchequer (the minister responsible for deciding how much money the government can spend) from 1908 to 1915 in Asquith’s government. He went on to become prime minister (6 December 1916–19 October 1922).
Derby: horserace at Epsom Downs Racecourse in Surrey, run on the first Wednesday in June from 1900 to 1995. The horses race 1.5 miles on flat grass without jumps. During the time that this story is set, it was extremely popular and an unofficial holiday.
dojo: room or hall in which judo and other martial arts are practised.
Dr Flora Murray (8 May 1869–28 July 1923): Scottish medical pioneer and member of t
he WSPU. She looked after Emmeline Pankhurst and other hunger strikers after their release from prison. With Louisa Garrett Anderson she founded the Women’s Hospital for Children in west London, to provide health care for working-class children.
Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson (1873–1943): medical pioneer, member of the WSPU and social reformer.
East End: poor area of London, east of the City, the financial district.
Edith Margaret Garrud (1872–1971): one of the first female teachers of martial arts in the Western world. She trained the bodyguard unit of the WSPU in jiu-jitsu.
Emily Wilding Davison (1872–1913): key member of the WSPU. She was killed in a protest action at the Epsom Derby.
Emmeline Pankhurst (15 July 1858–14 June 1928): political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement, who helped women win the right to vote. In 1889 she founded the Women’s Franchise League, which fought to allow married women to vote in local elections. In October 1903 she helped found the more militant WSPU. With the outbreak of war in 1914, she supported the government’s war effort.
Ernestine Mills: one of the suffragettes who took part in the Black Friday protest outside Parliament; she was knocked to the ground by police and photographed, shielding her face, by a journalist from the Daily Mirror. An artist and metalworker, she made jewellery for the WSPU.
Ethel Smyth (22 April 1858–8 May 1944): composer and suffragette. Her song, ‘The March of the Women’, became the anthem of the WSPU.
Evelina Haverfield (1867–1920): suffragette and aid worker, who was arrested several times for obstructing the police during WSPU protests. She was a member of the cycling suffragettes and named her bicycle Pegasus. At the start of the First World War, she founded the Women’s Emergency Corps.
Faraday House, Hampton Court Green: house in Hampton Court Road, East Molesey. The English scientist Michael Faraday lived there from 1858 to 1865. It became the home of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh.