by Kim Kane
Madeleine was suddenly aware that the three of them looked so clean, so creamy, so unpatched.
Aunt Hen stopped outside a small, squat house at the end of the street. The windows were milky, as the curtains had been drawn, and there was nothing and no one on the verandah. It looked blind.
Aunt Hen pulled a long brass key on a string around her neck out from beneath her dress. She unlocked the front door, which had four panels of plain red glass in it. Through the doorway Madeleine could see a long hallway, with unpolished floorboards and a fraying rug. Three doors ran off the hallway along the right-hand side, and the far end was blocked by a dusty curtain.
Aunt Hen motioned to the open door. ‘Welcome!’
The girls stepped inside, hopping over a mass of letters that had been stuffed through the letter slot. The walls were plastered but bumpy, and the place smelt damp and airless. Aunt Hen swept the post to one side. ‘Anna will go through that later.’
‘It’s the tiniest house I’ve ever seen,’ said Gert.
‘Tiny? Tiny depends entirely on how many people are crammed into a home – there are families with twelve children each in the slums, all sleeping in rows like biscuits in a tin. This is really very spacious.’
Aunt Hen walked past the first room on the right and into a second. It had dark lino laid out on the floor and it was lit by a small square window with a simple window seat built in beneath it. There was a barren fireplace in the middle of the far wall. The room was cold and smelt of stale smoke and industry. Madeleine pulled her coat closer around her.
To the left of the window, pushed against the wall, was a table, on top of which sat a big wooden crate filled with long metal pins, and a wooden box. Under the table was an open box with paper inside. In the centre of the room was a chunky machine made of dull, worn metal. It had a flat disc slightly bigger than a paper plate angled up towards the roof like a satellite, and a big smooth wheel on the side with a heart-shaped pedal. The floor beneath the machine was dented and covered in dark smears that had a deep sheen, like blood.
Gert pushed the machine’s pedal and the wheel spun with a perfect mechanical elegance. The mouth of the machine opened, and out popped three rollers covered in hard, calloused rubber.
‘Is it a spinning wheel?’ Gert asked.
Aunt Hen shook her head. ‘I’m hardly Rumpelstiltskin.’
‘Is it . . . is it a time machine?’ asked Madeleine, trying hard to sound casual.
‘A time machine? Gosh no, but it is a machine. Do you really have no idea?’
Aunt Hen stood behind the apparatus, her foot cocked above the heart-shaped pedal. ‘This, girls, is a voice.’
‘A voice?’ Gert tilted her head to the side and ran a finger along the metal.
‘Don’t touch, darling. These machines can be brutal if they’re not used properly.’
Gert dropped her white-gloved hand, which was now looking smudgy and a bit navy blue.
‘Think Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, fourteen thirty-nine: the world’s most glorious invention. It’s a voice, a glorious voice, my darling girls. This is a printing press, and we are producing The Hens’ Convention.’
‘You produce The Hens’ Convention?’ cried Gert.
Aunt Hen nodded. ‘The very one and the same Hen! I’m surprised you didn’t guess.’
‘Does Daddy know? He would slaughter you!’
‘We publish under a nom de plume, obviously. That’s why I asked you to promise not to breathe a word.’
Gert looked shocked, but she also looked, well, a bit proud – in awe, even. ‘Tremendous title, Aunt Hen.’
‘Why, thank you. I’m quite proud of it myself!’
‘You really publish The Hens’ Convention! How?’
‘We do. I have a tiny team, and we all work hard to produce and distribute it. Even in London! I thought, Well, if Louisa Lawson can manage it with very little means, I can do it too, and this machine makes it so simple. I began by printing leaflets, but I found I wanted to do more.’
‘But Hen Pen, it’s so scandalous! It’s wonderful!’ Gert was smiling now. She turned to Madeleine. ‘Daddy always called her Hen Pen because she was studious, sitting there with her pen in the inkpot. He has no idea how right he is!’ Gert looked around. ‘But who bought the press? Whose house is it?’
Aunt Hen smiled shyly. ‘The house is mine, actually. My father left it to me – it was a part of his estate – and I’ve always drawn an income from it, but my expenses are met by the other properties he left me, and I realised that by ceasing to rent it out, I had my own workplace.’
‘A room of one’s own,’ said Madeleine.
‘Indeed! I like that.’ Hen Pen nodded at her. ‘And so I bought the press.’
‘I don’t think Grandpa would have expected you to do this with it!’ Gert laughed.
Aunt Hen nodded. ‘Instead of just reading about what needs to be done, instead of just identifying problems, I thought I could jolly well get off the sofa and actually do something! One can’t change anything from the parlour!’ Aunt Hen looked excited and proud and almost as surprised by her action as Gert was.
‘How does it work?’ asked Madeleine. ‘Can we see a copy of the paper?’
‘I have a typesetter who helps us. Every little letter has to be set in a line, sentence by sentence, so it takes a long time to print a page – and then we have to edit carefully, as there can be frightful inaccuracies. Look at this one: Women Untie.’
‘Untie? What’s it meant to be?’ Gert tilted her head to the side.
Aunt Hen walked over to the table. She selected a range of small metal letters from the case, which she lined up on a wooden lip not unlike the one Madeleine lined her Scrabble words on at home.
‘Women unite!’ Hen declared when she was done. ‘One little slip and a very different meaning!’
Madeleine thought of her computer at home. ‘That took about three minutes to collate two words!’ she exclaimed.
‘It is a cumbersome process, but once it’s set we can print hundreds of copies. All we have to do is smear the ink here’ – Hen motioned to the plate – ‘and then the rollers distribute it onto the press. Come and have a look.’
Aunt Hen led the girls out into the hallway and back towards the front door. She opened the door to the front room. Inside, there were piles of boxes on the floor, all lined up and labelled.
Jan–March 1900.
July–Sep 1899.
April–June 1899.
‘So you bring your paper out four times a year, then?’ asked Madeleine.
‘We do. It takes us a while to get the articles together and edit them, and we are committed to a high standard of intellectual rigour, so quarterly is preferable. We’re always working on the next edition while the latest one is circulating.’
Aunt Hen opened a box and pulled out a copy. It was lovely. The ink was irregular, and you could see where the roller had missed little bits. The metal letter squares had sometimes left square edges around the letters on the page.
Hissing and stamping suffragists disrupt parliament!
Western Australia wins the vote!
‘It’s amazing,’ said Gert. ‘Good show, Aunt Hen. I mean, it looks like a proper journal! There’s even advertising!’
‘We mainly sell copies via subscription, but the advertising assists. Tea, coffee, cocoa, typewriters: there are so many businesses that rely on women’s custom.’ Aunt Hen smiled. She looked younger and happier and so energetic.
‘Identifying where change is needed is just the first step. Most of the work is acting on it. Just think, one bullet can start a war; one termite can bring down an entire house. And our current situation is outrageous. What is the point of securing education for women if we can’t take out degrees? If we can’t then work? Well, this way I can use all I learnt. I can read the cases, and we are effecting change. Moreover, my brother may shun me, but many of the men who are sitting MPs studied in England too, and they will listen to me. They will pu
t down their newspapers when I wish to speak to them. We will be heard.’
‘You will, you know,’ said Madeleine. ‘I really believe it.’
Hen Pen grinned back at her. ‘Does your grandmother feel the same way, Madeleine? That piece of paper you gave me, I’m convinced it was part of the monster petition. I was still in England, but I’m told it took four women to carry the beast into parliament! They had over thirty thousand signatures, from right across the colony.’
Aunt Hen took off her jacket and pushed her sleeves up. Her arms were long and strong.
‘Right, well, let’s get these in here.’
Hen Pen clicked open the brass clasps on her empty leather case, and took the top off a box labelled Apr–Jun 1900. Inside were hundreds of printed pieces of paper.
‘We can fold and staple them at Park Street; some are circulating already, but there is demand for another five hundred at least.’
Aunt Hen counted bundles of paper as she placed them in the case, her face puckered with concentration. Once she was finished, she picked up a large piece of fabric that had been tucked away between the two of the boxes of journals and spread it over the contents of her case.
‘What’s that?’ asked Madeleine, taking one end. The house seemed to offer up endless discoveries.
‘The Hens’ Convention flag! Do you like it?’ She shook it out. It was huge – about the size of a single doona cover. Printed on the front were three women dressed as old-fashioned soldiers, carrying enormous red shields and wearing brass helmets with bristly crests running along their tops like roosters’ combs. Instead of swords, the women had fountain pens. Across the front, letters which had been cut from felt and stitched on read: The Hens’ Convention. Fighting for votes for women. Common wealth, common suffrage.
‘We use it for rallies, but it’s torn. I can’t have a soldier with a flapping shield – the symbolism is appalling.’
‘I love the pens as swords,’ said Madeleine. ‘Always mightier. It’s so clever.’
‘Thank you! We’ll take it with us to Park Street too, and stitch it back together tonight. Those skills your mother drills into you are not without their purpose! I’d like to get you girls back now, before it gets dark. This area can be precarious in the evening.’
Aunt Hen hauled up her now much heavier case and pushed it along the hallway in front of her with her boots. The bottom hinges scraped two tram tracks in the dust, but if Aunt Hen noticed she didn’t care. Once they were outside, she locked the door with the brass key and tucked it back in under her dress. She then patted her chest twice, as if to check it was still there.
She smiled at the woman on the verandah of the house next door, who threw a big enamel tub of water out onto the street and looked at the ground.
‘Do they know what you do in there?’ asked Gert, reaching over to help Aunt Hen with her case.
Aunt Hen shook her head. ‘I’m trying to help them, but they have no idea. I think they believe I’m of dubious repute.’ Hen winked.
‘Well, you are, according to Daddy!’ said Gert. They all laughed.
‘I do have one friend here – Agnes at number six.’ Aunt Hen motioned towards the other end of the street. ‘She keeps an eye on the house for me, but she’s at her sister’s today. Poor Agnes. She’s frightfully busy with six small children and the washing she must take in to support them all. Her husband is a ne’er-do-well – one assumes he hits the bottle. Agnes said that just because she doesn’t have time to fight for the vote doesn’t mean she doesn’t see it as important. That has stuck with me.’
Hen Pen tucked an arm through Madeleine’s and her other arm through Gert’s, pulling them close.
‘The cab will be waiting – come on, girls!’
The cab was indeed still waiting for them at the corner. The driver was eating a sandwich tucked inside a sheet of greasy paper. He poked what remained of it into a cloth bag. ‘Where to now?’ he asked.
‘Twenty-four Park Street, South Yarra,’ said Aunt Hen. ‘Oh girls, I am bone weary.’
The driver helped her lift the case up onto the cab. ‘What have you got in here? A third daughter?’ He winked.
Aunt Hen smiled up at him.
The trio settled into the carriage and it drove them back towards the city centre.
They passed a tall, dark building as they entered the top end of the city. ‘That’s the gaol,’ Aunt Hen commented. ‘It was bigger than the cathedral at one stage. What does that say about a town?’
The carriage drove along a street and out over a bridge, then down a broad, dusty boulevard. Madeleine sank back against the hard leather seat and tried not to doze off.
The cab rattled along the road. The streets were not so hemmed in by houses here; rather, there were acres of parks as fresh as salads surrounding them, the birds in their trees cheeping as they settled down for the night.
The cab finally pulled up in front of a row of smooth white terraces with ironwork as fancy as any wedding cake. One of the terraces proudly displayed a brass number twenty-four in the centre of a very smart black door.
The door opened and there was Anna in her apron, smiling out into the dusky evening. ‘Miss Gertrude and Miss Madeleine.’
‘Anna!’ both girls cried.
‘Come in, come in. The fires are lit, and supper is almost ready. You must be exhausted after a day of travelling and touring.’
Madeleine walked up the bluestone stairs leading to the three-arched terrace and let Anna help her take off her coat. The hallway inside was carpeted with a runner tacked down on both sides. The strip of deep red carpet led to a staircase and continued on up, held in place on the stairs by horizontal brass rods. It was weird the way nobody actually carpeted to the edges, Madeleine thought. She could smell meat roasting.
Anna opened a door off the hallway onto a comfortable room with a fire burning in a tall marble fireplace. Above it, a painting of English-looking countryside was set in a golden frame, and lovely couches lined two of the walls.
‘Sit down, my weary travellers,’ said Aunt Hen, unpinning her hat.
The girls peeled off their gloves and unpinned their own hats.
Madeleine sank back against a solid cushion. Directly ahead of her, in the neat space between the large bay window and the return wall, was an oil painting of a woman with a brown coat and a curly striped feather in her hat.
‘It’s your mother!’ said Madeleine, recalling it in the hall of the Muse in her own time. ‘And the feather is a lyrebird’s!’
‘It is,’ said Gert. ‘Painted just after she met Daddy. I can never work out if she looks more like Bea or Imo. But she does look happy.’
‘Gertie, where are the sweets? I’m starving,’ said Aunt Hen.
‘Before we dine?’ Gert fished in her pinafore for a lumpy paper cone.
‘Once one has broken one of society’s rules, one discovers how very easy it is!’ Aunt Hen leant over to rummage in the cone, then popped a brandy ball into her mouth. ‘The longer you suck these, the smaller they get, but the shinier they get, too. That’s how I’d like to live my life as I age – shrunken but dazzling! Anna, do join us!’
Anna came into the room. Her demeanor towards Aunt Hen was different here – she wasn’t as shy as she was back at Lyrebird Muse. Aunt Hen offered her a cone of sweets and Anna took a red one. ‘We’ve a lovely joint for dinner,’ she said through the lolly.
‘Yum! No nursery tea here,’ said Gert.
‘If you’re old enough for suffrage, then you’re certainly old enough for dinner with the grown-ups!’ said Aunt Hen.
Gert beamed.
‘You’ll like it here,’ said Anna to Madeleine ‘We’re not so stiff and starchy.’
Aunt Hen pressed one finger between her eyebrows. ‘Anna, I am simply too tired to attend the meeting this evening. I still have an article to proofread, and my eyes are hurting.’
‘What meeting?’ asked Madeleine.
‘One of the so-called monster meetings of the U
nited Council for Woman’s Suffrage, at the town hall. The council is a group that joins all the smaller groups fighting for the vote together. Do go for me, Anna, won’t you? You can relay it all back to us tomorrow. And here.’ She handed Anna some money. ‘Make sure you take a hansom cab. This city is too drunken for young women out on their own.’
Anna smiled. ‘Thank you, Miss Williamson. I’d love to attend.’
Aunt Hen looked at the girls. ‘Anna and I have been having a number of discussions lately. Your father always assumes that women are represented by their husbands. Putting aside the fact that many husbands ignore their wives’ opinions altogether, the fact remains that there are thousands of us who do not have husbands – thousands like Anna, in paid employment; thousands of widows, and deserted wives. These women are not represented by anyone. They need to have a say in the decisions affecting them.’
‘Like my ma,’ said Anna. ‘Six kids, and a husband gone. That’s the thing about men; they do seem to hop the twig early, especially the good ones.’
She smiled softly, picked up the discarded gloves and hats, and left the room.
‘Does Anna go to all these meetings too?’ Gert asked her aunt. ‘I’d never have guessed.’
‘Yes – and why not? In many ways, Anna lives with the problems of which I speak more acutely than you ever will.’ Aunt Hen poked another humbug into her mouth. ‘I saw Anna attending a debate once, back near the Muse, so I asked her if she might like to go along to a big one. She was very keen, so now I request her assistance at Park Street whenever I’m able. There’s no need for me to attend every meeting personally – I certainly don’t require conversion!’
The two girls and Aunt Hen sat with cold cheeks, sucking lollies by the fire, wrapped in sugar and the buzz of their shared secret, and Madeleine wondered who else was secretly on Hen’s side.
Aunt Hen and the girls boarded the train to return to Lyrebird Muse the following morning. They did travel in second class – in the very last carriage. Apart from being completely empty and substantially noisier, as it had hard wooden seats forming a semi-circle inside each carriage rather than compartments, it was not too unpleasant.