Falling Angels

by Tracy Chevalier

  Even Maude enjoyed herself, though she did not say much—not that one can talk over the noise of the engine. For the first time in months she seemed to relax, snug in the backseat between me and the banners. As we drove through an avenue of plane trees, their leaves forming a canopy overhead, she leaned her head back and looked up at the sky.

  She helped me unload the banners at Clements Inn—Fred never lifts a finger to help, as he disapproves of suffragettes—but would not stay in the office, preferring to wait outside with Fred. I tried to be quick about it, but there were so many comrades to greet, questions to answer, and points to be raised, that by the time I got back to the car Maude and Fred were both sulking.

  “Sorry!” I cried gaily. “Never mind, let’s go on. Collingwood’s on Bond Street, if you please, Fred.” This stop wasn’t strictly WSPU business, but it was certainly to do with woman’s suffrage.

  Maude looked surprised. “Has Daddy bought you something new?” Collingwood’s was where Richard went for jewelry for me.

  I laughed. “In a manner of speaking. You’ll see.”

  But when she saw the necklace in the black velvet box which the jeweler proudly presented to me, she didn’t have quite the response I’d expected. She said nothing.

  The necklace was made up of emeralds and amethysts and pearls, clustered together to form purple and white flowers with green leaves. The stones came entirely from necklaces I already owned: pearls I had received for my confirmation, amethysts inherited from my mother, and emeralds from a necklace Mrs. Coleman gave me when I got married.

  “You’ve done a marvelous job,” I said to the jeweler. “It’s exquisite!” Maude was still staring at the necklace.

  “Don’t you like it?” I asked. “It’s the colors, don’t you see? The WSPU colors. Lots of women are having pieces made up in them.”

  “I thought—” Maude stopped.

  “What is it?”

  “Well—was I to inherit the necklaces that it is made from?”

  “Gracious, is that what the matter is? So now you’ll inherit this one instead.”

  “Daddy will be furious,” Maude said quietly. “And Grandmother. Those were her emeralds.”

  “She gave me that necklace to do with what I liked. It’s mine now—it’s not for her to say.”

  Maude was silent, a silence worse than the sulk earlier.

  “Shall we go to Fortnum and Mason’s for ice cream?” I suggested.

  “No, thank you, Mummy. I think I’d like to go home now, please,” Maude said in a small voice.

  I’d thought she would love the necklace. It seems that I can never please her.

  Richard Coleman

  I noticed them immediately. Kitty was in the hallway, preening herself in the mirror before we left for Mother’s party. Jenny stood holding her wrap while Maude watched from the steps. Her dress was cut low, and as I glanced at her décolletage I recognized the emeralds. I had seen my mother wear them many times when she and my father went to parties and functions, and once to meet the Queen. They look hideous now, made up in a new necklace with other stones.

  I said nothing—Kitty’s blackmail has effectively cut out my tongue. Instead I grew furious with myself for being so powerless with my wife. Surely this was not how a husband should be, so helpless and without authority. Kitty knew exactly what she was doing.

  Later when I saw the look on my mother’s face as she gazed at Kitty’s necklace, I could have throttled my wife’s lovely white throat.

  Edith Coleman

  I think she enjoys tormenting me.

  It has been bad enough this past year the few times when, for form’s sake, I have had to visit my son at their house. Worse still when she was sent to Holloway and the Coleman name appeared in the papers. I was mortified, but it blew over more quickly than I had expected. My friends—my good friends—did not mention it, sparing me further embarrassment. I was just glad that James is not alive to see his name brought so low.

  But the worst has been the emeralds. James’s mother gave them to me the night before our wedding, with the understanding that I would cherish and preserve them, to pass on to my own son’s wife. In those days such an understanding was unspoken. It would never have occurred to me to do anything other than wear the emeralds proudly and pass them on willingly when the time came. It could never have occurred to any of us Coleman women to desecrate them as Kitty has done.

  She wore them to my annual May party, with a dark green silk dress cut far too low. I knew immediately what they were, even if the necklace itself was not familiar to me. I would have known my emeralds anywhere. She saw me recognize them as well. Poor Richard standing next to her had no idea. Emeralds are in a woman’s realm, not a man’s. I shall never tell him.

  I did not make a scene—I could not in front of everyone, and I would not do so to please her either. Instead I waited until the last guest had gone. Then I sat in the dark and wept.

  JUNE 1908

  Lavinia Waterhouse

  At first I refused to help Maude. I wanted nothing to do with any suffragettes’ banners. But Maude is no seamstress, and when I saw her poor fingers at school one day, all pricked and torn from the needle (someone must teach her how to use a thimble properly!), I took pity on her and began going over in the afternoons to help.

  It is a good thing I have! She is so slow, the dear, and her awful mother has left her with the most impossible pile of banners to sew. It was odd at first sitting in that morning room sewing—I was worried that at any minute Maude’s mother would come in, and I have not felt comfortable around her ever since I Found Out. As it happened, though, she is rarely at home, and when she is she is talking on the telephone she had installed, and doesn’t even notice us. That telephone makes me nervous—I always jump when it rings, and I would hate to answer it. Maude has to all the time when her mother is out, and takes endless messages about meetings and petitions and other nonsense.

  Luckily my sewing is very good—I get through three banners to Maude’s one, and you can see her stitches. And it is rather fun sitting there together—we talk and sing, and sometimes Maude gives up sewing altogether when her fingers are bleeding too much, and reads a book aloud while I work. Jenny brings us endless cups of tea, and even coffee once or twice when we beg her.

  All we have to do is to sew, thank goodness. We receive the cloth and letters already cut, and the slogan written on a piece of paper pinned to the cloth. The letters are usually white, the cloth green or black. I don’t think I could make up a slogan if you paid me. Some of them are so complicated I can make neither head nor tail of them. What on earth does TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION IS TYRANNY mean? Or worse, WOMEN’S “WILL” BEATS ASQUITH’S “WON‘T”? What does the prime minister have to do with it?

  The best part has been the mistakes. It first happened when I was sewing on letters for one of the endless banners that read DEEDS NOT WORDS. (I am sick to death of those words!) As I was folding the finished banner I happened to glance at it and discovered I had sewn on WORDS NOT DEEDS. I was all ready to unpick the letters, but I peeked at Maude and saw that she hadn’t noticed—she was frowning over her banner, sucking on another pricked finger. So I quietly folded the banner, put it on the pile, and smiled to myself. Apparently there are to be thousands and thousands of banners—women all over the country are sewing them. Every few days Maude’s mother rushes in, grabs the pile of finished banners, and rushes out again without so much as a thank-you. I doubt anyone will trace the mistake back to me.

  After that I began to make more “mistakes”—a few more WORDS NOT DEEDS, and then I sewed WEEDS NOT RODS, and stuffed the extra D in my pinafore pocket. It was great fun creating errors: WORKING WOMEN DEMAND THE VOTE became VOTING WOMEN DEMAND WORK; HOPE IS STRONG became ROPE IS THONG.

  I had done half a dozen or so when Maude caught me out. She was helping me fold one when she suddenly said, “Stop a moment,” and spread out the banner. It read WHO WOULD FLEE THEMSELVES MUST STRIKE THE BROW
.

  “Lavinia! That’s meant to read, ‘Who would be free themselves must strike the blow’! You know, from Byron!”

  “Oh, dear,” I said, and giggled.

  “Haven’t you even been reading what you’re sewing? And where are the B and E for ‘BE’?”

  I smiled sheepishly and pulled the letters out from my pocket. “I thought they were left over, or a mistake,” I said.

  “You know very well what it was supposed to say,” Maude muttered. “What shall we do with it? It’s too late to change it, and we can’t hide it—Mummy’s sure to count them and will want to know why one is missing.”

  I struck my own brow. “Oh, dear, I’d best flee.” It was silly but it made Maude laugh. Soon we were laughing so hard we were crying. It was good to see her laugh. She has been so serious these days. In the end we simply folded up the banner and added it to the pile.

  I had not thought I would go to the Hyde Park march—the thought of being among thousands of suffragettes made me shiver. But after so many days of sewing and overhearing things about it, I couldn’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be rather fun. There are to be women from all over the country, not all of them suffragettes per se, and there will be bands and speakers, and spectacles all over. And then Maude told me everyone is to wear white and green and purple, and I thought up the perfect outfits for us. We would wear our white dresses, and trim our straw hats with flowers from the Colemans’ garden. Maude’s mother may be sinful, but she has cultivated the most wonderful flowers.

  “Delphiniums, cornflowers, star jasmine, and Persian jewels, all wound round with green leaves,” I decided. “It will look ever so beautiful.”

  “But you said you didn’t want to go,” Maude said. “And what will your mother say?”

  “Mama shall come with us,” I said. “And we won’t necessarily march, but we can be spectators.”

  Maude thinks Mama will never agree, but she always says yes to me.

  Gertrude Waterhouse

  I felt very silly doing it, but I couldn’t see any other way to stop her. When Livy and Ivy May came home from school my ankle was wrapped in a bandage and propped on a footstool. “I tripped over the threshold,” I said when Livy exclaimed over it. “It’s only a sprain, thankfully, no broken bones.”

  “Oh, Mama, you are so clumsy,” she said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “How long did the doctor say you must stay off it?”

  “A week at least.”

  “But that means you can’t take us to the march Sunday!”

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry, dear—I know how much you were looking forward to it.” I myself had been dreading it.

  Livy cried out. “But we must go! We can’t miss it, can we, Ivy May?”

  Ivy May was inspecting the bandage. I should have wound it more tightly.

  “Perhaps Papa can take us,” Livy suggested.

  “No,” I said quickly. I would not have Albert involved. “You will be at church with him in the morning, and he is playing cricket in the afternoon. No, I think it best if you stay home.”

  “Well, then, we could go with Maude and her mother.”

  “No,” I said again, even more quickly.

  “We’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “No.”

  Livy glared at me so hard I almost couldn’t bear it. “Really, Livy, dear,” I said as lightly as I could, “I don’t understand why you want to go so badly anyway. It’s not something that is of interest to you; nor should it be. I’m sure whoever you marry will be quite capable of deciding for you whom to vote for.”

  “On the contrary,” Livy announced, “I do support woman’s suffrage.”

  Ivy May tittered. “Livy doesn’t want to be left out,” she said.

  “Shush, Ivy May, I’m sure you want to go to Hyde Park too,” Livy said.

  “Do you really support woman’s suffrage?” I asked, surprised at my daughter.

  “I do! I think the colors are splendid—the scarves and jewelry in violet, green, and white. And the women whizzing about in motorcars, so lively and passionate—” Livy stopped when she saw my face.

  “I do not approve of the suffragettes, nor of the march,” I said sternly, hoping that would be the end of the matter.

  Of course it was not. Livy cried for two days and would not speak to me, until at last, the night before the march, I gave in. Nothing stops her getting what she wants, not even her silly mother’s schemes. I did not want Livy to discover I had tried to deceive her, so in the end I could not even go with them, but had to hand them over to Kitty Coleman.

  Ivy May caught me walking on my “sprained” ankle. Bless her, she said not a word.

  Maude Coleman

  We got off the omnibus at Euston Station and began to wade through the crowds of people already gathered on the pavement. Women were pouring out of the station, having ridden down on special trains from the north. Lavinia and I each grabbed one of Ivy May’s hands and held tight as we were pushed and shoved among a sea of accents from Birmingham and Manchester and Lancashire.

  Mummy moved quickly through the crowds—the crush did not seem to bother her, which surprised me given how much she hates being confined. When we got to the road in front of St. Pancras Station, she began scanning the faces of women in white dresses who had gathered in the road with their banners. “Ah, there they are!” she cried, and pushed through the crowd on the pavement to get onto the road itself.

  There I breathed more freely, for there was more room. It was strange to stand in the middle of such a big road and have no coaches or carts or cabs to dodge—just a long line of women in white dresses stretched ahead and behind, with men and women on the pavement watching us.

  Mummy led us over to a group of women, many of whom I recognized from her At Homes. “Here they are, Eunice,” Mummy said, laying her hand on the arm of a tall woman with a face full of freckles who wore a sash that read BANNER CAPTAIN. “And there’s Caroline!” Mummy cried, waving. “Caroline!”

  Caroline Black hurried over, flushed, her hair coming down from under her hat. Over her shoulder she carried a large bundle tied to a pole. Mummy kissed her. “Have you got everything?”

  “Yes, I think so,” panted Caroline Black, “though thank heavens I gave the boy the armor yesterday to bring down. I’d never have made it otherwise.”

  I did not know what they were talking about, but before I could ask, Mummy turned to me. “Now, Maude, I’m going to leave you with Eunice, who will look after you.”

  “But you’re marching, too, aren’t you?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “You’re marching with us.”

  “I will be in the procession, yes, but I’ve got something to do in another part of it. You’ll be fine here—you know most of these women.”

  “Where are you going? What are you doing?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “But ... we thought we were going to be with you. We told Mrs. Waterhouse you were looking after us.”

  Mummy shook her head impatiently. “What I have to do is far more important than looking after you. And frankly, Eunice is probably better at sorting you out than I would be. She’s banner captain for this section of the procession and is very capable. You’re in good hands with her. I’ll meet you at the end of the day, after the Great Shout at five o‘clock. Come to Platform Five, where Mrs. Pankhurst is speaking. I’ll see you there. Now, we really must be off. Have fun, girls! Remember, Maude, Platform Five after the Great Shout.” She took Caroline Black’s arm and rushed away into the crowd. I tried to keep my eyes on them but couldn’t—it was like following the progress of a twig through a fast-flowing stream.

  Lavinia had turned pale. “What shall we do without her?” she moaned, which was rather hypocritical given how much she dislikes Mummy.

  “Well, girls, we’ll have a grand day, eh?” Eunice cried as she helped two women next to us secure their banner that read HOPE IS STRONG. “I’ve got to check the other banner
s along my section. You stay here by this banner until I return.” She strode away before we could say anything.

  “Bloody hell,” I said quietly. We had been abandoned.

  Lavinia looked at me, shocked as much by my swearing as by our predicament, I expect. “Perhaps Mama was right,” she said. “Perhaps I should have stayed home. I’m feeling rather faint.”

  “Stop it,” I said sharply. “We’ll manage.” It was going to be a grim afternoon, and worse if she fainted as well. I looked around for something to distract her. “Look at the band—the Hackney Borough Brass Band,” I read from their banner. “Aren’t their uniforms lovely?” I knew Lavinia preferred men in uniforms. She was already saying she planned to marry a soldier. The musicians were smirking at the surrounding women. A euphonium player winked at me before I could look away.

  Lavinia was staring up at the banner we were meant to stay with. “Rope is thong,” she announced suddenly, and giggled.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  After a bit we began to feel better. The women around us were all talking and laughing, clearly excited to be there. The overall effect was of a great buzz of female sound, at times high pitched, loud, but not frightening as it might be if it were all men. It was hard not to be infected by the high spirits. And they did not all appear to be suffragettes. Many of them were just like us, there for the afternoon out of curiosity, not necessarily waving a banner and shouting. There were lots of women with their daughters, some of them quite young. There were even three little girls, all dressed in white with green and purple ribbons in their hair, sitting in a pony cart near us.

  Lavinia squeezed my arm and said, “It is terribly exciting, isn’t it? Everyone is here!”

  Except Mummy, I thought. I wondered what she and Caroline Black were doing.

  Then the band, led by a man with a handlebar moustache, began to play a march from Aida and everyone stood up straighter, as if a wire had been pulled taut all up and down the procession. An expectant hum rose from the crowd. Eunice reappeared suddenly and called out, “Right, then, banners up!” Women around her raised their poles and fitted them into the holders at their sides; then others who saw those banners go up lifted theirs, until as far ahead and behind as I could see there were banners sailing above a sea of heads. For the first time I wished I, too, were carrying a banner.