Crooked Pieces

by Sarah Grazebrook

  ‘But why them? Why not all of us?’

  ‘Because they have been found guilty of Conspiracy, so every deed may now be laid at their door. Besides, they alone have sufficient means to be worth hounding through the courts.’

  ‘What will happen?

  Miss Sylvia sighed deeply. ‘It already has. Mother and Christabel are bent on pursuing a violent course, no matter what. There have long been disagreements on that subject. It has reached the point where the Pethick Lawrences are no longer prepared to lend their name to such activities. Mrs Pethick Lawrence is a Quaker, after all.’

  ‘A Quaker?’ I squawked.

  ‘Yes, and a pacifist. They both are. And so, in my heart, am I.’ She stood up. ‘But I am also a Pankhurst.’ And though she did not say it, I knew she wished she were not.

  So the Union was split. We moved to premises in Kingsway and because we no longer had Mrs Pethick Lawrence to hold us in check, the office became noisier, and madder and more disorganised, and so did our supporters. Mrs Pankhurst counselled no caution, except in the matter of human life, and that not our own. It is odd that for one who cares so deeply about the safety of others, she seems so reckless with ours. And Miss Christabel even more so. Perhaps a broken head looks less painful from across the water in France.

  I did not mean that. Sure, without her the whole movement would crumble into dust. I remember Miss Sylvia saying once how the militants had ‘injected the thrill of life’ back into the fight, when it had all but sunk into a ‘coma of hopelessness’. And that is thanks to Miss Christabel more than anyone. She is the inspiration and force behind our every move. I am ashamed of myself for even thinking as I did.

  Gone, too, our magazine. Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence continue to publish Votes For Women and have found great favour with those who prefer a more peaceable approach. That will not do for the militants, naturally, so a new one has been started, The Suffragette, full of fire and brilliance, but without their calming influence it often reads more like a hellfire preacher’s ranting than a plea for fairness and justice.

  The Labour politician, Mr Lansbury, who called the Asquith a torturer, has shown himself a true hero, resigning his seat and seeking re-election as an Independent, hoping to further our cause. Miss Sylvia admires him mightily and has made him one of her speakers. He is to stand at the by-election in Bow.

  I went down to help. The people loved him, and but for his old party making trouble against him, he would have won, I am sure. Now the Tory has got in. In Bow! His name is Blair and he has to be told what to say all the time.

  Miss Sylvia is quite down about Mr Lansbury losing. She says the people of the East End deserve someone like him to stand up for them. She has had an idea. To gather a deputation made up only of working women from all over the country and take them to speak before the Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey, who is now quite white, but has grown a little softer with the years. Mrs Drummond is to take charge so whatever happens it will be exciting! Miss Annie is going too. There is to be a tailoress and a laundress and a pit-brow woman. A fisherwoman is coming all the way from Scotland. Good thing Mrs Drummond is going, so at least one person will understand what she is talking about.

  Miss Sylvia asked if I would be of the number. I thought it a strange request. ‘What can I say? I work in an office and am paid good money.’

  She said, ‘Tell them where you came from.’

  When the women had spoken, of how they worked ten hours a stretch for half of what the men earned, of how they swung hot irons from dawn till dusk because men could not stand to do it, of how they dressed the dead from the mines and cared for the children left behind, nursed the sick, stitched till their fingers bled, sweated over boiling tallow vats, choked on cotton dust till their lungs filled like pillows, it was my turn.

  I could see they were surprised to see me rise. Indeed I was quaking so heartily I feared I should fall down dead in a faint, for my feet and hands were tingling as when the prison butchers tied me to the torture chair.

  Then I thought, these men are not my torturers. How can I fear them when I have endured so much worse? So I gripped my snivelling drops of courage and began. ‘Excuse me, sirs, I know I am young and have little knowledge of the world or how it should be.’

  ‘I would imagine that to be true,’ muttered one of them.

  ‘But still I know that it is wrong for a woman to watch her children die, as my mother did, for want of medicine and victuals, and coal to light a fire. To have to choose between her ma and her pa, who shall stay and who go to the workhouse. To have a baby made on her year in year out, and when she is too ill for any more to…’ I stopped. ‘To have no power over her life and let it slip away as though she had never been, because she counted for nothing to those who could have made things better. There must be good men in the world, sir. And I know there are. Who would rule justly and seek to change such misery. They are the men we would vote for. How can that be wrong?’

  They listened. And heard nothing.

  There is to be no bill at all. The Parliament has ruled that to include women in the Manhood Suffrage Bill would so alter it that they must throw it out and start again. Well, if they do not do so soon they will have to start the whole country again, I think, for there is so much damage done, it cannot last much longer. Messages carved in golf courses, telegraph wires cut, windows smashed, the Crown Jewels attacked!

  Miss Sylvia is gone into the East End and will hardly come near us, so dismayed she is by all this destruction. Still the orders come. More breaking, more smashing, more slashing – pictures, posters daubed with slogans, houses fired, railway stations bombed, a cannon shot off at Dudley Castle!…

  They have burnt down our tearoom in Regent’s Park. I walked up there last evening when I heard. A little crowd had gathered, the people gazing and shaking their heads. ‘Next they’ll be burning us in our beds,’ one man said.

  ‘Stick ‘em in a barn and set light to that. See how they like it,’ said another.

  ‘There’ll be lives lost.’

  ‘So long as it’s theirs. Mad, they are. Worse than mad. Wicked.’

  I thought, are you the ones that picked us out of the gutter and sent us on our way with all your cheering? Have you changed so much? Or have we?

  When they had gone I went and stood in the ruins, by the window where Fred and I had sat and looked out at the great elephant, and it was still there, waiting.

  A new law has come in. It has a long name, but Mr Pethick Lawrence calls it ‘The Cat and Mouse Act’ when he writes of it, and that will do for me.

  A prisoner who starves herself will no longer be fed, but released until such time as she is recovered, and then taken back to prison to complete her term, and so on forever, or at least till her sentence is served.

  There is a great outcry against such cruelty. I know I should condemn it, and indeed I do in public, but my heart sings with gratitude inside me for I would rather endure ten years in prison than to hear the key in the lock and smell that festering rubber snake, clotted with sick and the dried-out blood of my sisters, and know what is to come.

  Poor Mrs Pankhurst is made very ill by so much starving and is gone into the country to recover. There are some who say she never will. This I do not believe for if pure force could destroy her she would have been laid low long ago. Her spirit drives her on and it will not yield till the battle is won. I shall ask Miss Sharp if that can go in next month’s Suffragette.

  I saw a man today on the street. From behind. He was walking along the Aldwych, swinging his arms the way Fred used to do when he was acting the fool. He had fair hair and a strong straight back. I started to run. I ran and ran till I came level with him. He turned and looked at me. He was older than my pa. I went into a shop.

  I do not know whether to be pleased or alarmed. Miss Sharp had given me a whole quarter page to fill and what happens? We are raided – all the copy seized and taken away as ‘evidence’. Of what, no one seemed very sure. That we can
spell? Surely soon it will come to that, for every day the arrests become more whimsical. The printer – for printing! Miss Kerr – for opening the door. It must be that, for she has done nothing else all day. I wonder what the police did before our movement was formed, for they have time for nothing else, it seems, but to harass and torment us.

  What a happy time this must be for house-robbers and pickpockets since there can be not one bobby free to apprehend them.

  Miss Roe, who is in charge while Miss Annie awaits trial for telling the truth, says she has found a printer and we are to cobble together as much as we can.

  Why is it, some people cannot leave you alone? Just when I have the hardest task of my life – to write two whole columns, and that with only a day to do it, into the office comes Miss Davison, all full of brilliant ideas for the summer fête which is weeks away. As usual, most of her plans involve a lot of work for others and a lot of praise for her. I thought I should scream if she asked me once more about where to order flags from, and when The Suffragette was published I saw that I had put three ‘m’s in Emmeline and could truly have kicked myself for mortification. I only hope Mrs Pankhurst is too ill to read it. I did not mean that. I just do not want her to think me a stupid ignorant girl, even if I am.

  A man called Bodkin is trying to stop us publishing altogether. He says it is ‘inflammatory’. I asked Miss Kerr what that meant and she said ‘setting fire to things’. I thought, well, perhaps he is right for half of England has been burnt down lately, but the public is furious and there was a great rally in Trafalgar Square to defend the freedom of the Press. Thousands came and afterwards we went on to Hyde Park and had a great laugh, making speeches (which we are forbidden to do just now) and as soon as the police arrived the crowd would hold them back till we had run to another part of the park and started again. I declare I could hardly speak for panting by the end of it, but it was such a lark – like at the beginning, except there was no Fred striding through the people to take my hand and walk with me beside the great Round Pond. I have almost forgotten him. It is only sometimes it comes on me.

  Last night I lay in my bed and thought what a mad wild world I have entered. I closed my eyes and tried to remember how life had been before I met the Pankhursts, but try as I might, I could not bring it to mind. It seems they were always there, even before I knew them or knew one thing about what they were fighting for. Why else did I struggle to learn my letters, to be best at the psalms, to be fastest with my numbers? Why was I strong when others were ill? Why did I thrive while others failed? What was it for?

  We have been much involved in arranging the summer fête. It is to be a fine affair, with cakes and jam and lace and handkerchiefs and all manner of delicacies for sale. Strawberries and cream and gentle music playing in the background. A children’s dancing display, bell-ringers, painted eggs and a (very spiteful) pig to bowl for. And everywhere great bursts of flowers so that you would think you were in Paradise or very close (apart from the pig).

  And all the while we are preparing for this comes news of another church burnt, a train destroyed, a garden hacked to bits with scythes. And Mrs Pankhurst, in, out of prison, every time weaker, more frail, more racked with pain. Her voice, that filled the Albert Hall, leaking from her like a punctured balloon. Only her smile, that bright brave smile pouring courage into all who see it, remains unbroken still.

  I have been put in charge of the pig. I begged Miss Roe to find someone else but she said there was no one free and, besides, I was the strongest. I wished then I had been bolder to offer myself for hunger-striking.

  We have spent a wretched day, the pair of us. The pig is in a pen with straw which it continually fouls so that I have to keep climbing the rail with a shovel to clear up after it. This the children find more exciting than anything else in the pavilion and they hurtle around me, positively screeching with laughter as I ferry to and fro with my steaming stinking buckets.

  All day I have prayed that someone would win it, but it seems we have to wait till the show is over unless someone beats all others by a clear ten points.

  At the end of the day as I was nailing back a banner which had dropped into my pen for the third time, I heard a voice behind me. ‘Maggie, I need two flags. Where can I get two flags? It is most urgent.’

  Since it was Miss Davison, of course it was most urgent, because everything always is.

  I said, ‘I believe there are some in the office, but it will be locked now.’

  ‘I must have them. How can I get them?’

  I was tempted to say, ‘Why do you not walk up the wall and break in through the roof, Miss Davison?’ for I was sure she would think nothing of it.

  ‘I do not know. Do you need them tonight?’

  ‘No, not till tomorrow, but early.’

  ‘I must go by the office first thing to collect some more leaflets. Will eight o’clock suit you?’

  ‘Yes, oh yes, that’s brilliant, Maggie. Thank you so much. Eight o’clock. I’ll be there. Good night. And well done with the pig.’

  ‘Well done with the pig’! I am surprised she does not translate it into Latin.

  She is there already, waiting for me. Big bright eyes, almost mad, you would say, but so hopeful. Always so hopeful. Is that what madness is? Hoping? For things that will never come?

  I unlock the door. She bounds past me up the stairs. We find the flags.

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Two, yes please.’

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’

  She smiles. ‘You’ll know soon enough.’

  ‘Are you going to the show today, Miss Davison?’

  For a tiny moment her face seems troubled but then back comes the mad hopeful smile. ‘Not today, Maggie, I’m off to the Derby, but every day after. I’ve still to bowl for that pig of yours.’

  I say, ‘Well, you could not do me a greater favour than to win it.’

  She laughs. ‘They say one good turn deserves another. Here.’ She reaches into her pocket and gives me a florin. ‘How many goes will that buy me?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Oh, I should be exhausted by so many. How about if you have five turns on my behalf? Then tomorrow I can take the rest?’

  ‘If that is what you would like, I should be happy to.’ Already a thought comes to me that I am strong enough to win the prize and who better to pass it on to?

  ‘Yes, I should.’

  I collect my leaflets. Miss Davison looks round the office as though trying to place it in her mind. As we go down the stairs she says, ‘Maggie…’

  ‘Miss Davison?’

  For a moment she says nothing, then, ‘I do envy you, you know.’

  I stare at her. ‘But why?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. I suppose because people need you. I always wanted to be necessary. Never quite managed it.’ She laughs. At the door we part.

  ‘See you tomorrow. I’m counting on you to win that pig for me.’

  I smile. ‘I shall do my very best, miss.’ I watch her trotting off towards the station, flags bundled up under her coat.

  We were packing up for the night. I was bouncing with joy for I had won the pig on my third ‘Miss Davison’ throw. If that was not enough I had spent the day feeding it treacle toffee so that she would find out just how exciting it is to clean up after a pig more stinky than a newborn babe. ‘Well done with the pig, Miss Davison!’

  Miss Kerr brought the news. She is a quiet soul and does not like to put herself forward so when I saw her – standing so awkward in the middle of the hall, her face screwed up, hunched over like she had been punched, just sobbing – I knew something awful had happened.

  We gathered round.

  ‘There has been a terrible accident. Miss Davison – Emily Davison – she… I do not know the details but it seems…’

  Miss Sylvia led her to a seat. ‘Take your time, Harriet. Compose yourself. Tell us what has happened.’

  I remember thinking, if she has got hers
elf arrested and left me with this pig to look after…

  Such a sad day. Emily Davison, she that I had watched so cheerfully setting off just a few hours before, flags flapping like petticoats from under her coat, mad hopeful gleam in her eyes, was now lying unconscious in a hospital bed, broken to pieces by the King’s own horse.

  The news had come through in a telegram. Miss Kerr had been alone in the office when it arrived. She had telephoned the hospital but they could give her scant information, except that a lady called Miss Emily Wilding Davison had been admitted suffering from ‘multiple fractures and contusions’. Miss Kerr had asked the cause of them but was told they did not know. It was on her way to the Empress Rooms to find Miss Sylvia that she had seen the headlines: Suffragette Brings Down The King’s Horse.

  There were various opinions of what had happened. Some declared she had thrown herself directly in the path of the oncoming mount, others that she had merely tried to grasp its reins and become entangled in them. One bystander swore she had already tried to halt two horses before the King’s, another that she had cried out ‘God has sent me’, before flinging herself on to the track.

  I think the truth was that no one knew what happened. The pictures showed a horse down, a woman twisting away from it, her hat spinning in the air like a child’s quoit. A horse, a woman, a lilac hat. And a thousand people looking the other way.

  She died on June 8th, four days later. ‘Misadventure’, the inquest said though I have heard people call it suicide. I do not believe them. Miss Davison wanted to live. She wanted to live forever. That was her misfortune.

  No one could be found to bury her. All those clergymen – so bold with their words till someone asks them to hold to them. ‘Self-murder is a crime against God.’ So, presumably, is torturing his creation to the point where such crimes happen.

  Only one, a good kind man. Mrs Pankhurst dragging herself from her sick-bed and, for her pains, ripped away to Holloway before the funeral. Her carriage driving empty behind the coffin. Lilies, the scent of lilies, white against white. Blood red peonies, purple and black sashes. Marching, the soft shuffle of feet, no words. And over it all the banner flies: Fight on and God will give the Victory.