Crooked Pieces

by Sarah Grazebrook

  Things are going well again. Men as well as women are flocking to the Cause. There are plays about suffragettes, songs, poems and every day the papers are full of it. Mrs Pankhurst’s great friend, Dr Ethel Smyth, has written a piece of music specially. It is called ‘March of the Women’ and when we first heard it a lot of us thought we would rather hear cats fighting on a tin roof, but we are all to learn it in time for our next demonstration, before the coronation. If we sound as bad as the choir that sang it to us I should think the Parliament will give us the vote just to go away.

  The Government has some plan to count everyone. I cannot think why. What difference does it make how many people there are unless you intend to feed them or educate them or cure them when they are ill, and for sure this government will not do that.

  We are to avoid it (you can only be counted in your own home, it seems. A bit like poor Mary having to go all the way to Bethlehem, I suppose, and we all know what trouble that started).

  Great events are being arranged to occupy us on the day. There are to be concerts and parties and dancing – anything to keep us out till past counting time. Miss Sylvia and I are going to go roller-skating. You have wheels tied to your feet and then you skid round and round forever. At least I shall, for no one has told me how to stop. Miss Sylvia says if we get tired she knows at least three parties we can go to. One with a fortune-teller. I am so looking forward to it. Perhaps the Government can be persuaded to count the people every month. It is just the sort of thing they like to spend their time on in order to avoid the proper business of the day. Wait till we get the vote. Then they will have to work for their money. No wonder they fight it so hard.

  This Prime Minister, Asquith, is surely closer to the serpent than any man born. With all the country on our side, and half the world, to judge from the letters pouring in, he ups and changes the bill that was to give us our rights at last. In its place, the Manhood Suffrage Bill. Votes for all. Oh yes. All men!

  Mrs Pethick Lawrence was close to tears. ‘After all this time. All our efforts. The suffering. The imprisonment. The… All for nothing. Nothing. Worse than nothing.’

  ‘But if this bill is passed, will that not pave the way for our own?’ Miss Kerr sort of whispered.

  Mrs Pethick Lawrence threw up her arms in despair. ‘No. A thousand times, no. Do you not see, if all those men who are without a vote are granted one, do you truly believe they will continue to side with us? To fight on our behalf? Once they have achieved their goal?’

  Miss Kerr looked very chastened. ‘They might.’

  Mrs Pethick Lawrence gave a mournful sigh. ‘If only I had your faith, Miss Kerr. However, experience has taught me that altruism is a preserve of the Chosen Few.’

  I looked up ‘altruism’. Unselfishness. I can only think her Chosen Few are not the same as mine. And if they are not, then maybe neither is anything else. Maybe none of them think the same as me. Want the same things. Would that be so surprising? I am from a different world. I could live a hundred years amongst these people and not be one of them. I read somewhere that there was a queen who, when she died, they cut her open and found the word ‘England’ carved right across her heart. Well if the same thing happens to me, they will find ‘Stepney’ writ on mine. And how they will laugh.

  Oh, I am so tired. So tired of it all. Fred, I miss you so much. I am so alone.

  Today I thought I should go mad. I had thought and thought so hard, lain awake half the night trying to persuade myself out of it. In the end I decided if the sun was shining in the morning I would do it, but if it rained or was even a tiny bit cloudy, I would not. I was woken by the sun on my face.

  It was a beautiful card. A giant green tree all covered in silver tassels with presents laid at the foot of it and a family – boy, girl, mother and father all gazing at each other and smiling. Inside it said, ‘May the blessings of the season be with you.’ I had wanted to write something extra but, though I spent half the morning scribbling little messages, none of them seemed right, so in the end I put, ‘with love from Maggie’. On the envelope I wrote: Constable Fred Thorpe, Hadlow Village, Buckinghamshire. At lunchtime I ran all the way to the post office before I had time to change my mind and posted it in the great box outside.

  At half past two Miss Lake came bursting into the office. ‘You’ll never guess what. Miss Davison is arrested.’

  This was nothing new.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, a very audacious thing. She put a lighted taper into the pillar-box outside the main post office.’

  I felt my throat tightening. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, two bobbies rushed forward and dragged her off to the police station.’

  ‘To the things in the box?’

  ‘Goodness, I don’t know. Burnt to a cinder, I expect. What a whiz idea, though.’

  I went home for Christmas. Mrs Grant was there and wearing one of Ma’s old aprons. I know it was wrong of me but I spoke sharply to her. Not about that – something stupid like the way she sliced the mutton. She looked so wretched that I could have bitten my tongue off. Lucy thought it a great joke.

  Later I said I was sorry. Mrs Grant looked so relieved. ‘Maggie, I understand. It was foolish of me. I did not think. I had left my apron at home and did not want to spoil my best skirt, that is all.’

  We both knew this was not true, but Ma is gone now, and Mrs Grant has had more than her share of grief. Why should she not scoop a ha’p’orth of happiness out of what comes her way? Pa seems a sight better tempered, and the children are clean and fed and Mrs Grant is past the age for birthing, so where’s the harm? It’s a hard life for a woman without a man.

  Thankfully no one asked about Fred. Too busy eating. I dreaded that Lucy would say something but she held her peace till the evening when I was getting ready to leave. Then she showed me a pretty blue bangle. ‘Guess who gave me this?’

  I shrugged. ‘Pa?’

  She snorted with scorn. ‘When did our Pa ever give anyone a present?’

  I took a breath, ‘Frank, then?’

  I swear if the Asquith needed a female serpent for company my sister Lucy would serve. Her slitty pale eyes fair gleamed. ‘Fred.’

  ‘You are a liar.’

  ‘Am I? Am I? Well, why don’t you ask him yourself? If you can find him.’

  I could not help myself. I took hold of her hair and shook her till she screamed like a boiled cat. Pa came running and pulled me away, but not before I had a fistful of her scraggy locks.

  ‘What’s this? Maggie, let go. What are you thinking of? Leave go your sister now.’ So I did because if I had not, I would have killed her.

  Lucy hauled herself into a corner, whimpering like some half-eaten rat.

  Pa shook his head in despair. ‘What is it between you two that there is never a moment’s peace when you are together?’

  ‘Ask her,’ I spat.

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  ‘Nothing. There is nothing between us. Nothing.’

  Bull’s-eye! I broke the whole of the front window, all full of dummies daubed in jewels and silk and top hats. There they stood, sprinkled with glass like diamond dust, their proud bony noses poked up at the sky as though nothing had happened, and I swear they looked more real than the nobs they copy.

  Mrs Pankhurst had fooled the Government into thinking we would gather on March 4th. While they were stretching their brains round how to crush us, we flocked into the West End on the 1st and broke every shop window between Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road.

  Better still, my stone went into Marshall and Snelgrove where that pickle-faced crow, Miss Blackett, works. Buyer or not, she will have her work cut out to clear that lot up.

  The police, expecting nothing, were slow to come after us although when they did arrive they looked in no mood for jokes. I had told my team to run straight for Mrs Garrud’s. As fast as we got there she had us out of our clothes and into fighting garb, our weapons hid beneath loose floorboards in
the studio. Seconds later came the screech of whistles and furious thumping on the door.

  ‘Quick, girls. Bicycles.’ And down we went on our mats, peddling the air for all we were worth. Mr Garrud let them in. Six great bobbies came thundering up the stairs and there they stopped, great whiskery chops hanging open.

  Mrs Garrud, cool as a cucumber, turns to them. ‘May I ask the reason for this interruption? Girls, you may lower your legs now. Just lie on your fronts and practise your breathing.’

  One crimson-faced sergeant steps forward. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am, but we had information that some suffragettes were seen entering this house. They have caused a pile of damage to the Oxford Street shops just now and it is our duty to try to apprehend them.’

  Here my breathing turned into snorts for I was trying so not to laugh. Mrs Garrud sent me for a glass of water. On the way out one of the bobbies peered at me real hard. I did a cartwheel right under his nose so he would have something worth gawping at.

  When they had gone we fell about laughing.

  If the Government thought because of the 1st they could forget about the 4th…! Knightsbridge took such a knocking! Glass, glass, glass. So many arrests. I know not how I escaped it. Perhaps it is because now I know so many back streets and side-alleys. So different from when I first came to London. I almost never get lost now.

  What I would not give to be back to those days. I must not think like that. ‘Times change. Life moves on,’ as Miss Christabel would say.

  Times certainly changed this morning. I had hardly drawn the blinds when there was a clanging on the doorbell and in came four detectives to charge Miss Christabel and the Pethick Lawrences with ‘Incitement’, and now Miss Christabel is fled to France. I can hardly believe it. That she would leave us.

  We are like a rudderless ship, tossed this way and that in a stormy sea with no lighthouse to guide us to calmer waters.

  I did not think of that, I am happy to say. Miss Davison came up with it and insists it goes in the next edition of Votes For Women. If there is one, for with Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence arrested, I do not know how we shall sort it. I begin to wonder if Miss Davison uses so much Greek and Latin because her English is so soppy.

  One wonderful thing has come out of all this. Miss Annie is back to run the office. Each weekend she travels to France and returns on the night train with Miss Christabel’s articles and new instructions for us.

  Stone throwing is the order of the day. The prisons are full to bursting. It is a strange time. Half of the public support us and half are against so much violence, for though Miss Christabel insists that we respect all human life, she urges us constantly towards greater and greater destruction of property. She says it is the only way, and if the Government pays no heed when its offices are attacked, then we must go further and destroy their very homes.

  I do not like the thought of this. Desks and typewriters are one thing. Where a man lives with his family is another altogether.

  And yet today I would gladly destroy the home of Judge Lord Coleridge and everything about him from his flee-ridden wig to his fat flat feet. Nine months! Mrs Pankhurst, Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence. ‘Conspiracy and Incitement’.

  ‘But what is that?’ I begged Miss Sylvia. ‘They have never thrown a stone between them. Nor harmed anyone. Except with their truth and courage.’

  ‘I know, I know, Maggie. It is a dreadful sentence. Quite awful.’ She looked so pale and exhausted, but I had to know.

  ‘Please tell me what it means. I need to understand.’

  She sank down in a chair. ‘It means… I suppose it means trying to force other people to do your bidding, whether they want to or not.’

  ‘Like the politicians, you mean?’

  She nearly smiled. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  The feeding has begun again. Terrible tales come out of women bleeding from their ears, unable to swallow, their vision wrecked, limbs cracking over pumped up bellies. I daily give thanks that I am needed here and cannot leave the office. Every day comes news of some fresh torture. A ‘doctor’ has writ that women are mad by nature and nothing can alter it! I wonder if he thought them mad when they answered his every bidding, or if he has come but lately to such lofty thinking.

  Miss Davison, who managed to get herself arrested merely for going into the post office (a thing I do every day without a second glance from anyone) has thrown herself down the stairs at Holloway and is in the prison hospital, mightily wounded.

  Miss Kerr telephoned the news to France. Back comes the order, ‘Tell Maggie she’s to write a whole column in Miss Davison’s honour. Make sure it gets the front page.’

  I said I would not (only to Miss Kerr).

  She looked terribly worried. ‘Oh, please, Maggie. I’d do it myself but I haven’t a minute free at the moment.’

  ‘Why can’t she do it herself? She does everything so much better than anyone else.’

  ‘Oh, Maggie, that’s not very generous. Miss Davison is such a very brave soul. Surely you should feel proud to be asked to write her praises?’

  ‘I’ve no doubt I should, Miss Kerr. But I don’t.’

  She said no more but when Miss Annie got back the two of them were talking together for ages and then Miss Annie came looking for me. ‘Maggie, what’s this, you don’t want to write our front page for us?’

  I was ready for her. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to, miss. I just don’t think I’m up to it.’

  ‘Of course you are. We wouldn’t have suggested it else. Miss Christabel was most particular. She says you have a fine way with words.’

  ‘Not Latin and Greek ones, miss. And I’m sure Miss Davison would expect a deal of those.’

  ‘Miss Davison is in no condition to choose at the moment, Maggie, and I’m sure if she were, she would like nothing better than for you to chronicle her deeds in your own distinctive way.’

  I thought, that she would not, for it would make for pretty spiky reading.

  ‘And besides,’ she went on, ‘Miss Christabel desires it specially. Don’t worry about the filing. I’ll get someone else to finish it for you.’

  By three o’clock I had got no further than: Miss Emily Davison has been taken to the prison hospital again. Sadly. She threw herself down the stairs and is much hurt by it. Sadly. She has done things like this before.

  Miss Sylvia called in with some press cuttings and she and Miss Annie came to see how I was getting on. Poor Miss Annie looked quite desperate when she saw. ‘It’s fine, Maggie, so far. But couldn’t you try and go a little bit faster? We need it at the printer’s first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m sorry, miss. It just doesn’t seem to be coming quite as it should.’

  ‘No, well, do your best. If you can’t finish it in time I’ll just have to stay late and see what I can come up with.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  When she had gone Miss Sylvia popped back to me. ‘Maggie, I have a suggestion. Tell me if I’m being stupid, but why don’t you pretend you’re writing about Mama? I know how much you admire her, and it would be such a shame if the front page was…well, a bit…dull, if you see what I mean.’

  I was off like a rocket and finished by ten past four, although Miss Sharp who has taken over the paper for now, did ask I remove the line about ‘withered old bones’ and ‘a lady of advancing years’. I have still not forgiven Miss Davison for burning my Christmas card to Fred.

  Perhaps it was meant to be. Perhaps I should be grateful to her. I only know I am not.

  Oh, Fred. Where are you? Why did you go? I miss you so much. I have got back my body nearly. I am healthy again. My arms are strong and firm like before, my hands are soft. I’m no longer a witch. And every part of me is aching for you. For all the things you were going to help me be. A wife, a mother, a woman. Now I shall never know any of them.

  But I have my work.

  Mrs Pankhurst and Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence have been released at last. They are gone abroad to recover. Today a Labou
r Member of Parliament challenged the Prime Minister, calling him a torturer and a murderer. His name is Mr Lansbury and he was thrown out for his pains.

  The Government has done a wicked thing. The wickedest of all. It has sent the bailiffs to The Mascot to take away the furniture and sell it to pay for the court cases. My heart is sick when I think of that most beautiful of homes being torn apart by villains and thieves, for that is all bailiffs are, and the worse for they carry the law with them in their thievery. I did not think such a thing could happen to a gentleman and lady, like Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence.

  And now the shopkeepers are at it, too. Saying they must be paid for their windows and it is for Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence to bear the cost of it. They are like dogs picking at the flesh of a great fallen lion. Well, a lion may fall but he may rise again and then beware, those dogs.

  I showed that to Miss Sharp and she gave me that funny fierce look of hers and said, ‘Not bad, Maggie. I think we might find a space for that.’

  Miss Sylvia came to the office tonight. I was about to lock up. We had had a busy day for tomorrow there is to be a great meeting at the Albert Hall to welcome home Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence. God knows, they have been greatly missed.

  I could see she was troubled.

  ‘I have bad news, Maggie. Dreadful. I wanted you to know before it becomes public for it affects you – all of us, very deeply.’

  My heart started pumping. I did not dare to think what was coming.

  ‘My mother and Christabel have had a secret meeting with Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence in France. They discussed the bailiffs’ writ and all that that means. It seems that if the Government insists on applying it, it will be entitled to charge every penny of damage our movement causes to the Pethick Lawrences personally.’