“Won’t you sit down? Your leg must be hurting you.”
“It is nothing. Your servant bandaged it.” But she did sit down and was still a little flushed and breathless, though she had ordered her appearance since her fall, so that her dark eyes were dry and her hair in place.
“Since you know who I am, will you at least tell me who you are?”
“Elizabeth Latimer.”
“And how old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“What would your parents think if they knew what you had done here this evening?” It was a foolish question, the sort of question I knew I would resent in her shoes.
“If they were still alive, Mr Strafford, they would be as uncomprehending as you, though with the excuses of being older and less well-informed.” I was suitably rebuked.
“I’m sorry, Miss Latimer. You must forgive any testiness on my part. It is a reaction to having a brick thrown through the window of my private house.”
“You have been Home Secretary for a year now. What have you done in that time that would prevent an unenfranchised woman throwing a brick through your window?”
“But Miss Latimer, you have not yourself come of age.”
“For shame, Mr Strafford. More sophistry.”
She was right, and I was ashamed as I leant back in my chair and gazed across at her, wondering why, at the height of my powers and standing well in the counsels of the land, I could not match her for energy and commitment, why I should ever think that my mastery of debating techniques could excuse a politically expedient ambivalence. I recalled the scene in Okehampton Town Hall nine years before, when I had first been elected. My high hopes had since been fulfilled. But what of the electors’ trust in me? Had that been rewarded, when Miss Latimer could so rightly rebuke me? I looked across at her, striving to conceal this sudden guilt, but she, gazing back, dispelled it in the most unexpected manner. Her mouth curled into a hesitant smile which was at once restrained, as if it had appeared in a forgetful moment. Her own mask, that of the amazon campaigner, had slipped, to show the beautiful, nervous young woman beneath.
“Mr Strafford – what do you propose to do with me?”
“Why, nothing, Miss Latimer.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing. You may go entirely free – on one condition.”
“And that is?”
“That you meet me again soon, when you have recovered from your injury, so that we may discuss your views in calmer fashion.”
“To what purpose?”
“Surely the man whose window is broken may attempt to show the breaker the error of her ways.”
“Very well. You offer me an opportunity to show you the error of your ways which I can hardly refuse.”
“Shall we say Hyde Park next Sunday afternoon at two o’clock – the seats by the Round Pond?”
“The venue seems an odd one.”
“Miss Latimer, I cannot meet you in formal surroundings. Yet, as Home Secretary, I would earnestly like to hear more of how my government can so have failed that it drives the pride of its young womanhood to window-breaking. I would also like to bring you to understand that political realities preclude immediate concessions to what may appear to be the cause of justice and right. I should hope that such an exchange of views would prove educative to both parties. Yet it can only be of benefit if it remains, at this stage, confidential. I must therefore ask you not to report our meeting to your confederates.”
“Mr Strafford, that is no hardship. They would pour scorn upon my failure.” She blushed, as if regretting this frankness. “I will meet you on Sunday.”
“Thank you, Miss Latimer. And by all means report your evening’s work. I shall advise the newspapers of the attack upon my house. Privately, you are welcome to the credit.”
“Though you and your colleagues are completely in the wrong, Mr Strafford, I must concede that you are at least a gentleman.”
This seemed the most harmonious note we were likely to find on which to close. I called Prideaux and asked him to show her out. He did so with a disapproving grimace. I stood by the broken window of the drawing room and watched as Miss Latimer walked away down the street, still limping slightly. She did not look back, but I looked after her until she was out of sight, wondering if she would keep our appointment, whether, for that matter, I ought to keep it. Now that she had gone, it seemed an absurd thing to have agreed. Yet, already, I was looking forward to Sunday, determined in my heart to go, and do the worrying later.
Sunday May 30 duly came and I with it to Hyde Park in the sunshine. Parents were frolicking with their children by the Serpentine as I made my way with as much nonchalance as I could muster towards the Round Pond. There I saw an old man selling balloons to clamouring children. As a group of them scampered away, a view opened up of the benches. Seated on one of them, dressed in cream and reading a book in the shade of a pale blue parasol, was Miss Latimer. She did not look up as I approached.
“Good afternoon, Miss Latimer,” I said, doffing my hat.
“Good afternoon, Mr Strafford,” she replied, looking up gravely from her book. “Won’t you sit down?”
“It’s a lovely day,” I ventured conversationally as I sat beside her.
“It is indeed.”
“May I ask what you have been reading?”
“It’s a new book of poems by Thomas Hardy – Time’s Laughingstocks.”
“Do you think that we are Time’s laughingstocks, Miss Latimer?”
“We may be one day, Mr Strafford.”
“One day, when women have the vote?”
“Touché.”
“Alas, it was a sophist’s thrust.”
“It is good that you should recognize it as such.”
“Thanks to you, Miss Latimer, I have lost faith in sophistry.”
“I am glad to hear it, but doubtful How can you so suddenly have lost faith in something which has served you so well in your career?”
“Let me try to explain.”
“Please do.”
And so it was that, on that bench in the warmth of a Sunday afternoon, with the sounds of ducks and children at play as accompaniment, I told Miss Latimer more of the effect of a political career on a politician than I had previously told anyone save myself. Perhaps my solitude had left me in unwitting need of such an opportunity. Certainly, Miss Latimer’s sincerity had reminded me how much of that commodity I had been obliged to shed in the pursuit of public office. I told her how, in the effort to master each new brief, to establish a Parliamentary reputation, and to achieve good standing in the eyes of the Liberal leadership, I had perforce neglected those other aims which had been in my mind when first I solicited the support of the electors of Mid-Devon. I also explained that my rise to a Cabinet post and the small degree of fame that went with it gave me a measure of that independence necessary to implement some of those neglected aims. And in all this, I contended, there was a lesson for Miss Latimer and her fellow-Suffragettes: something could only be achieved after an apprenticeship of respectable endeavour, not simply by the power of argument, however forceful, in other words that they should emulate my example, serve their time and await their opportunity.
This was not best-calculated to appeal to an impetuous twenty-year-old. But Miss Latimer’s counter-argument was based on other grounds, namely that the women’s suffrage movement had served its time, since the last suffrage extension in 1884, that the presently growing militancy was a symptom of rightful frustration and that, if the Liberal Party did not soon take heed, they would lose ground to those – like the Labour Party – who would.
“Miss Latimer, you are more convincing than any housebrick.”
“But, without the brick, would you have listened?”
“I have always listened to the suffragists, but I would not have listened to this one in particular. Therefore I give thanks for the brick.”
“Mr Strafford, you flatter me. What matters is not whether I am convincing
but whether you are convinced.”
“I am convinced that you are a most remarkable young lady which my party is the poorer for having lost to the suffragist cause. How came it to have so ardent a campaigner?”
“In no very different way to that in which it has recruited many educated women who grew tired of waiting for politicians to see sense.”
“Yet your example might be instructive.”
“I doubt it. But my story is briefly told, so let us see. My family hails from the Forest of Dean. My mother died when I was born and my father when I was ten. I was an only child and therefore had to rely on the charity of distant relatives. Fortunately, an aunt took me in. I still live with her, in Putney. My father had left sufficient for my education at a boarding school in Kent. There, one day in the library, I read of a meeting in Manchester disrupted by Christabel.”
“I remember it well.”
“It made me realize that there were many who shared my dissatisfaction with the sort of deferential existence we girls were being groomed for. As soon as I left school, I made contact with the Women’s Social & Political Union. I was well-received and at once impressed by their energy and commitment. Christabel was the driving force and inspired us all, as she still does.”
“To attack politicians?”
“Mr Strafford, you would hardly expect me to volunteer to His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Home Affairs information about who planned or suggested such acts. I take sole responsibility for my action on Thursday evening.”
“I am glad to hear it, Miss Latimer. I was not inviting disloyalty and, besides, your action on Thursday evening will never be a police matter. I am only trying to establish how matters have come to this pass.”
“Then you already know. We women have waited too long and will wait no longer. Remember what I said in my note.”
“Oh I do. Unhappily, it is not within the power of the government to meet your demands. If a bill for female suffrage passed the Commons tomorrow, it would assuredly be rejected by the Lords.”
“That, Mr Strafford, is your problem.”
“And it will be solved. Our differences with the Upper House are approaching a crisis, which will, I believe, be precipitated by this year’s Budget. But the crisis will take time to resolve – at least a year. Until it is, what is the point in harrying us?”
“Lest you forget, when the time comes.”
“I for one will not. But perhaps you could donate an occasional brick to serve as an aide memoire.”
“I shall be casting no more in your direction. One is enough.”
“Then we have achieved something?”
“I think so.”
“Yet I may still forget. It would seem a pity to do so for want of your refreshing candour.”
“Feel free to avail yourself of it at any time.”
“I hope I may. I have enjoyed our talk here in the sunshine. Could I perhaps suggest a little outing into the countryside later this week for a further ministration of your antidote to a politician’s self-importance?”
“In my judgement, Mr Strafford, you need the antidote less than your colleagues, but I would not wish to deny treatment to the valetudinarian.”
“Who is pleased to hear it. My office permits me a few extravagances. One is the motor car I have recently purchased. An excursion in it might entertain you. Would Wednesday afternoon be convenient?”
“If you can free yourself from your duties for so long.”
“Oh, I think I can. Besides, I would probably be doing the Metropolitan Police a service by occupying you for an afternoon. Could I perhaps collect you from your home at two o’clock?”
“A motor car at the door might prove too much for Aunt Mercy. Let us say Putney Bridge.”
“By all means. I’ll look forward to that.”
So it was that I collected Miss Latimer as arranged on Wednesday afternoon. We drove out to Box Hill, a favourite picnic spot for Londoners, but pleasantly deserted that day. We strolled up onto the crest of the North Downs and took the air, full of the skylark’s song and gentle summer breeze.
“Thank you for bringing me out here,” said Miss Latimer. “It is wonderful on the downs.”
“I wish that I came here more often,” I replied.
“But you are too busy.”
“And starved, until now, of an ideal companion.”
She demurred, but did not deflect the compliment with some barbed bon mot, as she would have done the previous week. Later, in a tea shop in Dorking, we clashed briefly over the question of Suffragette hunger strikers. Just as I was about to point out that, with buttered scones before her, she was poorly placed to comment, she said the same herself. The absurdity of the militant campaigner taking tea with the dedicated politician whilst, elsewhere, civil servants might be ascurry at some new outrage, suddenly struck us and we dissolved into a laughter that drew disapproving glares from neighbouring tables. That day in Dorking, we did not care.
We returned to Putney in good time and I was invited in to meet Aunt Mercy. A small, spry, bright-eyed lady blissfully unaware of who I might be, met us in her conservatory and continued to tend her chrysanthemums whilst hearing of our outing. She insisted that her niece should show me the garden. There I took the opportunity of requesting Elizabeth’s company for dinner on Friday. She accepted. This time there was no mention of curative treatment for my blindness to suffragism. This time, I said goodbye to Elizabeth, not Miss Latimer, and she to Edwin, not Mr Strafford. The fences were coming down.
Yet not all caution with them. I shunned my normal haunts for dinner, for fear of encountering a colleague, and took Elizabeth to an establishment favoured by my brother on his rare visits to the capital – The Baron in Piccadilly. I drove down to Putney on a fine evening to collect her. A maid admitted me and Elizabeth appeared from upstairs, wearing a dark blue velvet dress and presenting an appearance that is possibly my loveliest memory of her. She wore a pearl necklace and a brooch at her breast, but no other jewellery. Nor was any needed to enhance her beauty, the dark, lustrous hair drawn back from her face and the large, clear eyes gazing upon me. All in all, I felt, as we drove back towards Piccadilly, a very lucky man.
The Baron did me proud for dinner, the head waiter being as impressed by Elizabeth as I was. We spoke discursively and pleasurably, abandoning the rivalries of the suffrage for music, art and literature, our very different lives now converged in our strangely similar visions of the future. As we shared our thoughts, I found myself thinking of sharing our lives. Easy as that was by candlelight, I realized that realism would come with daylight: the Home Secretary and the Suffragette was not a viable partnership. Something had to give.
And we both gave, a little. Elizabeth could not abandon her cause, but, by eschewing militancy, she could avoid embarrassment to me. I could not abandon office, but, by saying nothing in public and telling the Cabinet in private that female suffrage must somehow be wrought, I could apply a little discreet pressure on her behalf. We did our best by each other. And for each other we seemed surpassingly good. We drove and dined often, Elizabeth introduced me to the opera and I her to cricket. We came to trust each other with confidences about intrigues in the Cabinet and the suffragist movement. Elizabeth seemed to make of me a better person and this new-found completeness took the raw edge off my political ambition. It had been charged with the difference Elizabeth made in me. And in her accounts of altercations with Christabel Pankhurst over campaign tactics, there appeared the hint of a difference that I had made in her.
With time, we became less cautious. I was down to speak in one of that summer’s long, acrimonious Commons debates about the Budget. Only when halfway through did I realize that Elizabeth was in the public gallery, watching. I think it was her presence that made me risk a joke – well-received as it turned out – to the effect that, if the Chancellor’s proposed diversion of funds to the tarmac-adamming of roads came to pass, many who had coughed on the dust thrown up by my own vehicle would
be duly grateful and that they must include voters of both parties. That was, in a sense, a tribute to Elizabeth, who had told me “Never take yourself seriously – only what you believe in” and had been, as on most subjects, wise beyond her years.
I entertained her in the Members’ tea room after the debate and she acknowledged the tribute, silently, over the tea cups. We were joined, unexpectedly, by Lloyd George. Perhaps he had seen Elizabeth and headed in our direction as a result, being one famed for his interest in the fair sex, especially a beautiful young representative of it. This fact made me slightly uneasy.
“Won’t you introduce me to your charming companion, Edwin?”
“Certainly, L.G. Miss Elizabeth Latimer, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”
They shook hands, Lloyd George contriving to give Elizabeth the glad eye as he bowed and smiled. In any other company, I would have been amused by his incorrigibility; now I was irritated by it. Not that I needed to be, for Elizabeth treated him almost with disdain, to which he was not accustomed and which only our growing affection made it seem that he deserved. Still, it was not an uncongenial spectacle to one who had often enough seen the Prime Minister shrink beneath his Chancellor’s wand.
Elizabeth betrayed a knowledge of politics over and above any confidences of mine and joked that even the tea in her company was Liberal (it was Earl Grey), which persuaded Lloyd George that she was that dangerous phenomenon, a beautiful and intelligent woman. The beauty and intelligence I could never have doubted, but of danger I saw no sign.
The summer passed in this carefree entrancement. Early in August, I was persuaded to indulge Aunt Mercy’s passion for horse racing: Elizabeth and I took her down to Goodwood for the day. Aunt Mercy was the only one to win any money, but my sights were set on a higher prize. Picnicking on the grass with the slope of the South Downs behind us and Mercy lost somewhere in the press round the betting tent, I mentioned the impending Parliamentary recess, when I customarily got away to Barrowteign.
Past Caring - Retail Page 7