‘Shaw!’ Constance called down from the stage. ‘I want to hear what you have to say, but this is the first week of rehearsals. We’ve a week to go…’
‘That’s precisely why I’m here. If you don’t get it right now, it’ll never be right. Surely you can spare half an hour for an old author.’
He said ‘owld’, emphasising his Irish accent. Though he wasn’t that old, decided Elizabeth. He was in his thirties or forties, tall, lanky and strong, with wiry hair and a beard. In his hand he carried a large, bohemian kind of hat.
‘Half an hour, in the Green Room,’ declared Constance. ‘The cast takes luncheon now.’ She looked round, and her eye lighted on Elizabeth. ‘Elizabeth,’ she said, ‘there’s no one else. Go to the public house and get them to cut us some sandwiches, ham and cheese. Make sure of the cheese – Mr Shaw eats no meat. Bring them to the Green Room.’
When Elizabeth arrived back in the Green Room with the sandwiches, the battle was raging. ‘Make some tea, Elizabeth,’ said Constance. In the short half-hour dictated by Constance, Elizabeth heard more words spoken, on more subjects, than she had ever heard in any half-hour of her life. According to Shaw, the play, though a comedy, touched on every intellectual and political aspect of life, from socialism to belief in God. She realised that Bernard Shaw was that bogeyman of Robert Warren’s nightmares, an atheist and a socialist. She had learned, incidentally, that her employer, Constance, was that other nightmare figure from her uncle’s demonology, a supporter of women’s suffrage.’
‘All I’m saying, my dear,’ Shaw told Constance, ‘is that for a woman who believes she’s every inch a man’s equal, only more so, you play the part in an over-ladylike way, as if being beleaguered by suitors of a very undesirable kind were somehow a cross a woman had to bear, along with childbirth, disenfranchisement and the washing tub. This should be a part where you demonstrate your own views. You’ve scarcely to act at all, Constance. Just be Constance, that’s all I’m asking.’
‘How little you really know of acting, George,’ Constance said. ‘Or of me, for that matter.’
‘I give you up for lost, Constance,’ Shaw had declared, though it was plain he had not. ‘Gerry – what are you doing to this woman? Whatever it is, do the opposite, or she’s dead. She’ll be no more use to us or herself than a piece of cabbage on a plate.’
Gerry Fitzgerald was lying in a chair, with his feet towards the gas fire. He remarked, ‘Constance will play her part as you wrote it, as you want it, when the play opens. At the moment she is making sure everyone else will be all right. When she’s sure of that, she’ll change and become your Anastasia.’
‘How can they play their parts right if she does not?’ Shaw asked him energetically. ‘Hers is the chief role. She is the catalyst, the fire, the principle of energy. Now, from what I saw this morning we have no fire here. To change the metaphor, the cast will reflect her light, if she gives out light. At present we have a very dim beam indeed.’
‘It’s being sketched in, George,’ Gerry Fitzgerald told him. ‘This week, we find out what happens in the play and establish various principles about it, such as not falling over each other on the stage. Next week is the time for fire in the belly. This is how Constance works. Have confidence.’
‘All right then,’ Shaw said, standing up. He pointed at Constance. ‘I shall return next week, and may demand to see a little more animation. I wish to see a woman of character.’ He went rapidly to the door, then turned, asking, ‘How goes the movement – Mrs Fawcett and the other ladies?’
‘We keep up the campaign,’ Constance had replied.
‘You’ll need a lot more than petitions and letters to MPs,’ Shaw said. ‘It’ll take bombs and guns to make an English government give women their rights. You can trust me on that point; I’m Irish.’
When he had gone, Constance got up and walked angrily about the room. ‘Insupportable arrogance – “you can trust me on that point; I’m Irish”,’ she mimicked. ‘He thinks you can trust him on any point, whether he’s Irish or not. How dare he speak to me in that way? Patronising fool.’
‘He’s no fool,’ said Gerry Fitzgerald.
‘Oh!’ exclaimed Constance. ‘I know he’s not. He’s merely unbearable, that’s all. Oh God, what’s the time, Gerry?’
Gerry looked at his watch. ‘Time to be back on stage.’
‘Elizabeth, clear all this up and return to the stage as soon as possible. Guns and bombs,’ she muttered, going out of the door. ‘Guns and bombs, I ask you.’
Elizabeth raced to clear the cups and plates and run them to the stone sink outside. Gerry, in the meantime, stood up. ‘I expect he’s right, though, about the bombs.’
‘What?’ Elizabeth said in alarm. ‘Women to become like the Fenians? That cannot happen, surely.’
‘So where do you stand on the issue of the vote, young lady?’ he asked, looking at her quizzically. She was putting the teapot, plates and cups on a tray.
‘I can’t see why women shouldn’t vote, if they have to pay taxes,’ she said. ‘They taught us at school that there should be no taxation without representation. That’s right, isn’t it? But my uncle says women haven’t got enough intelligence to understand serious issues. Their brains work in a different way from men’s. They understand practical things, not abstractions.’
Gerry carried the tray to the sink for her. ‘Do you think Miss Albury cannot understand abstractions?’ he asked.
‘Oh – I didn’t mean – that is my uncle’s opinion,’ said Elizabeth.
‘I know that,’ said Gerry Fitzgerald.
Her political education continued. Part of her unofficial duties was, each evening, after rehearsals, to help Edith Strutton dress for the evening, often in elaborate gowns, when Edith and her husband were going out to dinner or a party. It was her job to hand Edith her brushes and combs, pick up discarded clothing and fold it, help with her hair. At a certain stage in the proceedings, Edith would make sure that Elizabeth was out of the room, or busy with her back turned, while she discreetly applied rouge to her cheeks. Elizabeth knew she did this, but pretended not to look. She was lacing Edith’s stays tighter that evening when she asked, ‘Mrs Macdonald’ – off stage Edith preferred to be addressed by her married name – ‘what do you think about the vote?’
‘For women?’ Edith said incredulously.
‘Yes.’
‘Put that right out of your head,’ declared Edith. ‘That’s for old maids and women who’ll never catch a husband. Any woman worth her salt can make a man do anything. She is, if she has any wits at all, the power behind the throne. Tell me, dear, what good would the vote do for you, or me, or any woman? It does precious little for men. Start thinking of the vote, my dear, and you’ll grow old and ugly in a flash. With your figure, and that red hair, you don’t need to make matters worse. That’s tight enough,’ she instructed, breathlessly.
Elizabeth began to tie the stay laces at the back, while Edith held herself in. When it was done, she released her breath. Then she said, ‘All right – the dress.’ Elizabeth dropped the frothy concoction of dark pink, with cream lace, over her head. Edith looked at herself in the big glass with satisfaction.
‘Now my hair,’ she ordered.
As Elizabeth rolled the little felt sausages, known as ‘mice’, into Edith’s hair, to give bulk to her swept-up style, Edith said, ‘Don’t pull. I’ve told you enough times I have a very sensitive scalp. And take my tip, don’t let Constance Albury set you off on some path where you lobby for the vote and fall foul of the menfolk. She doesn’t understand. Men will do nothing for you if you ask directly. They don’t like women demanding things, poor creatures. But they’ll give anything to a pretty woman if she leads them to think they thought of it themselves. Constance’s looks have never been her biggest asset, which is perhaps why she feels she has to bully for what she would call her rights.’
‘Not every woman is pretty, though,’ said Elizabeth tentatively.
‘Thank
God for that,’ Edith said, stretching her white arms above her head. ‘Or some of us would lose our advantage. Could you put my shoes on – I’m so tight-laced, I can’t bend.’
Elizabeth was none the wiser after Edith swept out. When she raised the subject tentatively at home, the conversation was stopped by Robert Warren as unsuitable and pointless in a house full of women unqualified to discuss the subject. She tried to read the Daily Telegraph, but still was no wiser.
In the ensuing four years, however, the subject was more widely discussed, even in the Daily Telegraph. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies had been proceeding sagely forward under the leadership of the distinguished and clever Millicent Fawcett, but making little impact. Then a Manchester widow, Emmeline Pankhurst, helped by her two daughters, founded the Women’s Social and Political Union and began to apply more pressure. Constance joined, of course. As did Lilah Zakarova, to the astonishment of some. ‘I may be silly, but not silly enough not to know that I pay taxes so that men can spend my money,’ Lilah announced, as if the MPs in the House of Commons were just so many more of the men she frequently fell in love with, and who equally often disappeared owing money and with gold watches she had given them as presents.
During the summer, the campaign had continued. The Imperial had been on tour and the actors, even Constance, had been preoccupied with the performances, the packing up, and moving on from place to place.
The company returned to London in late August. It was at the end of October that the odd trio – Constance in an old hat, Lilah in tight boots and ostrich feathers, and Elizabeth in her plain navy coat and a beret – had set out for Hyde Park Corner to join the march of women on the day of the opening of Parliament. The intention was to lobby the newly elected MPs about the vote for women.
The assembly was a nervous one. None of the women was used to collecting together in large numbers, or being seen marching through the streets for a common purpose. The large contingent of women workers from the industrial north might have felt easier about this, but many other women, who had led more sheltered lives, did not. Constance beckoned to Lilah. ‘Come with me, Lilah, I’ve been summoned to the front. Head up – step out boldly. Show no fear. Some of these good women look as if they’d been asked to parade naked through the streets. At least we’re used to being seen in public. Elizabeth, you come too – and smile!’
They marched to the Strand, where there was to be a public meeting. There were people on the pavements and hanging out of windows.
‘None of them has ever seen so many women together,’ Lilah muttered.
‘I don’t think there ever have been,’ Elizabeth said.
‘There must be three thousand of us,’ said Lilah, practised at telling the size of an audience at a glance, ‘all getting our hats ruined in the rain. And the bottoms of our skirts muddy. What a spectacle.’
‘Do you wish you hadn’t come?’ asked Elizabeth, as they walked past Trafalgar Square.
‘We must get some rights,’ Lilah said firmly. ‘Even I can see that, and I haven’t got a brain in my head.’
‘It’s more obvious to us, who’ve got a profession and an income. I suppose that’s why all the mill girls are here. They earn well when they’re in work.’
‘There are girls from the music hall, too. Look, there’s Lily Strugnell, dressed to kill,’ Lilah said.
‘It’s exciting, isn’t it?’ said Elizabeth.
‘No,’ said Lilah. ‘Because we aren’t going to win.’
Constance, walking just in front with an aristocratic-looking woman, overheard and looked back. ‘Lilah, don’t be silly. Of course we will.’
Lilah felt bold enough to contradict her. ‘They’re in the House of Commons, under cover. What do they care if we’re walking in the rain? And if women got the vote, they’d start standing for Parliament. They don’t want us there. They want to keep the job for themselves.’
‘Common justice demands it,’ Constance said. ‘Right will win the day.’
Lilah did not respond. Her face showed Elizabeth clearly what she thought.
Later the news emerged that a contingent of suffragettes had interrupted the opening of Parliament, had been arrested, had next day refused to pay their fines and been taken to prison. The day after, in the wings, before the Saturday matinée, Edith Strutton said sardonically to Lilah, ‘I’m surprised you’re here. I thought you were in prison. And Constance, too. I’d planned to visit you in the cells tomorrow.’
‘Don’t be silly, Edith,’ Lilah said.
‘That’s what it’ll come down to, sooner or later,’ predicted Edith, sweeping on stage in frills and furbelows. They were playing a Feydeau farce, full of comings and goings.
‘Well, I’m proud of you, girls,’ Harry Hislop declared, putting his arms round Elizabeth and Lilah. Then he surged on to the stage in his uniform of a captain of the Dragoons, crying, ‘Amélie, my love. I have returned to claim you.’
Above the sound of the audience’s laughter, Lilah muttered, listening for her cue, ‘You should marry him. If you thought we didn’t know, we do,’ she added rapidly. She rushed on stage, leaving Elizabeth astonished. She hissed, ‘Even Constance?’ Lilah kicked back her train, giving her an excuse to turn her head into the wings, head averted from the audience. She motioned, ‘Of course.’
‘Blast,’ Elizabeth said, too loud.
Behind her, Constance, who had just arrived costumed as a dowager dressed for a ball, whispered furiously, ‘Ssh, keep your voice down, you bad girl.’ She gave her a sharp push. ‘And get on that damned stage.’
Elizabeth gave her a startled look, then, realising that her secret love affair had been no secret at all to Constance, or anyone else, for some time, launched herself on to the stage, arms wide, declaiming, ‘But – but – what are you doing with my fiancé?’
Chapter Twenty–Seven
Well, here’s my vote for you, then,’ Jack Finlay shouted. He smacked Lily on one cheek, full force, so her head jolted. ‘And here’s another one for the ballot box.’ He swung his arm and smacked her on the other cheek. Lily, her head spinning, sank to the stone floor of the dressing room, both hands to her face, crying, ‘Oh Christ, Jack, leave me alone. Don’t mark my face.’
The door was flung open. The intimidating figure of Lily’s agent, Sam Stackpoole, appeared in the doorway. He wore evening dress, and held a cigar in one hand. He surveyed the scene – Lily in only her corset and drawers, sobbing on the floor; Jack Finlay in white shirt, black trousers, his feet bare, looking down at her, an ugly expression on his face. The room was a mess. A huge basket of flowers had been knocked over, the make-up on the dressing table swept to the floor, along with a whisky bottle. The smell of alcohol and flowers was sickening.
‘God Almighty! What the hell is going on in here?’ he burst out. ‘What are you doing to Lily, Finlay?’
Jack Finlay swung to face him. He was an impressive sight, with his head of golden curls, a beautifully modelled Grecian nose, large, black-fringed blue eyes, and full red lips. Even now, with a tidal wave of rage and violence sweeping through him, his beauty was extraordinary. Sam Stackpoole, though intimidated, stood his ground. ‘Come one step closer, Finlay, and I’ll have you arrested. Don’t budge. I mean it. Get up, Lily. You’re coming back to my place tonight.’
‘She is not,’ Finlay said.
‘She is,’ Sam declared.
‘Damaging your valuable property, am I?’ Finlay asked. ‘This woman is coming home with me. I’m her husband, aren’t I? I say what happens to her. If I’ve chastised her, it’s my right.’
Lily got up. ‘You’ve got no right to knock me about.’
‘Haven’t I? When you defy me? When you deliberately miss a matinée to go on damn-fool marches with a lot of damn-fool women for some damn-stupid vote you don’t know anything about? We need that money, Lily.’ He swung back on Sam. ‘As for you, Stackpoole, you’re her agent. You ought to be the first to stop her. If you can’t, you can clear off.
You’ve no right to interfere between man and wife anyway.’
‘Man and wife is one thing,’ Sam said. He was a tall, thick-set man. He filled the doorway. ‘Knocking a woman about is another. Word of all this is getting out. It looks bad, Finlay, a professional fighter laying hands on his wife, especially a popular artiste like Lily. I’m warning you.’
‘This woman,’ Finlay said, ‘doesn’t know a vote from a hole in the wall. Bloody hell, none of us do. Have you ever voted?’
Sam thought, then reluctantly shook his head. He started to say something.
‘No, you haven’t,’ Finlay interrupted. ‘Nor’ve I, nor have any of us. And if Lily had the vote she wouldn’t either. She hasn’t the got the brains for politics – she hasn’t got the brains of a bluebottle. She went because the others were going. What kind of a reason is that for doing anything? She went, she let down the management of the theatre. Booked for four performances – missed the first. Why? So she could walk around in the rain with a lot of women who haven’t got anything better to do, asking for the bleeding vote which she doesn’t understand anyway. Got her pay docked, naturally. You lost money, too. I suppose that’s all right by you, is it? It won’t be all right by my manager if I don’t turn up Saturday in Finsbury Park, just leave Henry Jethro standing in the ring by himself and the crowd sitting in seats they paid for, waiting for a fight. Of course I’ll be round at the Houses of Parliament asking Mr Asquith for my political rights.’
‘You rotten bastard,’ cried Lily, looking in the glass. ‘You’ve marked me. I can see bruises coming up. How can I go on stage tomorrow?’
Finlay assured Sam, ‘There won’t be no bruises, believe me.’
‘I don’t suppose there will be,’ Sam said coldly. ‘You know your business too well.’
Elizabeth and Lily Page 27