‘This is desperate of ya,’ hissed Honora.
‘Well I am,’ Winifred muttered, deliberately misunderstanding her friend. She cast a look around the room; saw the bewilderment on the faces. ‘Everyone – there is something I thought you’d like to hear. I believe, as I think you also believe that there should be no difference between men and women in law or politics – or art. Honora O’Reilly is an artist, a wonderful artist. And she also has a wonderful voice. I’d like to thank you for listening to me today and to ask her to finish off my time with you here by singing our new anthem; ‘March of the Women’, by Ethel Smyth and Cicely Hamilton.’
She stepped back, leaving Honora at the front of the stage. There was a soft rustle as a woman from the front row hurried to the piano at the side of the hall. She played the opening notes and then looked expectantly up at Honora before starting again.
Shout, shout, up with your song!
Cry with the wind, for the dawn is breaking…
Honora’s mellifluous voice flowed around the hall. Someone from the back of the hall joined in, then another and another. Soon everyone was standing.
March, march—many as one,
Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend.
As the last words were sung the place erupted with clapping and stamping.
Winifred rushed forward to hug her friend. They wept and laughed at the same time.
The tall imposing woman who was trying to organise the crowd into some semblance of order was shouting above the noise. She was repeating the words with which, as principle speaker, she’d closed that last meeting.
‘Remember these words of Mrs Pethick-Lawrence, Ladies: “Wear white for purity in public as well as private life, green for hope and purple for dignity, for that self-reverence and self-respect which renders acquiescence to political subjection impossible.”’
They’d cheered at the time, Winifred along with them. It was impossible not to feel excited. The men in Government would see they were acting as respectably as they could. That, as women, all they wanted was equality in voting; to be able to have as much a say as their husbands, their brothers, their fathers.
But as they joined the crowds she sensed the atmosphere was different from other marches. There was a tension, a pent-up anger amongst the women that resulted in a lack of order. There were no organized ranks, people milled around as if unsure which way to go. Standing on tiptoe, Winifred could just see the heads of the police on horseback, two large black police vans and, in the distance, on the steps of the Courthouse in the town square, the destination the parade would be making for. She fingered the buttons on her coat, touched the brim of her hat, reassuring herself by the gesture and stared around, hoping to see the organizers of the march, the women who had rallied them all at the meeting, but she saw none of them. Maybe they were at the front, she thought, looking past the makeshift flags and wooden boards, with crudely written slogans, which were being waved alongside the large WSPU official banners.
The crush was getting worse. Shopkeepers on both sides of the road, previously watching with nervous curiosity, turned their backs and, chivvying their assistants in front of them, went back into their shops, closing the doors.
The new anthem, ‘The March of the Women’, rose and fell beneath the shouts and cries of those already being jostled and buffeted.
‘Stay up close,’ Conal bellowed.
Linking arms in an effort to stay together the seven of them formed a line. To Winifred’s right Honora was already singing, the exhilaration flushing her cheeks.
Shout, shout, up with your song!
Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking…
Her voice broke every now and then as they were erratically pressed forward by the people behind them and the breath was knocked out of her.
Jolted each time, Winifred began to panic. Despite the cold, the air was filled with a mixture of cloying perfumes and sweat. Some of the women’s faces around her reflected her fear as the throng grew tighter.
Suddenly there were louder screams, the clatter of horses hooves, loud bells rang from somewhere and people were turning, running, scattering in all directions, pursued by the police randomly hitting out with their batons. Horrified, Winifred heard her own scream rising from her lungs.
‘Move onto the pavement.’ Conal’s yell was almost lost in the cacophony of sounds
The splintering of glass and the loud shout of ‘votes for women’, from someone was the first indication of the stones being thrown through the shop windows. Their group battled to get to the pavement. It was a mistake. People were hitting at the windows with hammers, splintering the glass. Winifred cried out in pain when a fragment struck her ankle.
‘This way.’ Conal dragged her backwards.
She tried to hold on to Honora’s hand, clutching as tightly as she could but her grasp was loosened and there was a sudden pull on the fingers of her glove. ‘Hold on, Honora, hold on.’ The glove was torn from Winifred’s hand. ‘Honora!’ The last she heard from her friend was the shrill scream, the last she saw was the fear on the Irish girl’s face as she disappeared beneath the surrounding mêlée.
A horse thundered towards them, ploughing a furrow through falling women collapsing under blows and hooves. Winifred caught a glimpse of a woman clinging to one of the street lamps, thrashing a riding-switch at the policeman’s legs. Then the horse faltered, blood streaming from its neck, a broken shard of slate in a long cut.
Winifred looked up through the protective arms of Conal. Two women were on the roof of one of the shops. Leaning over the edge they threw broken slates down at the police.
‘Stop it, ya bloody eejits, stop it,’ he yelled, bending his back further over Winifred to shielding her.
She heard his gasp of pain. ‘Conal?’
‘I’m fine.’ He was holding his ear, blood seeped through his fingers. ‘We need to get away,’ he bellowed above the uproar.
But suddenly the hooves of a horse were looming over her head. The animal reared up, its eyes rolling, mouth pulled wide in the bit. Winifred saw the angry face of a policeman, whip held high above his head.
Then all she felt was the weight of Conal pinning her to the ground.
Chapter 45
There was a rushing of air in her ears; her face cold, pressed against something hard. One arm lay underneath her and her back hurt. Winifred groaned, tried to pull her legs up to her chest. Too painful. She was so cold. ‘Conal?’ She listened. Through the pounding of her pulse she heard the groans. Where was she?
‘Conal?’
‘There’s no-one called Conal here as far as I can see.’ A hand grasped her shoulder. ‘Come on, girl, get up.’ It was a woman’s voice, low, modulated.
Winifred rolled painfully onto her back; the ground was lumpy under her. She was lying on cobbles in a narrow alleyway, dark stone buildings crowding in, showing only a rectangle of dark starless sky. Her arm, at first numb, began to tingle.
The woman, kneeling at her side, was drenched, her hair flattened to her scalp. She wore a white jacket, dirty and wet, the remnants of her long skirt showing ripped stockings, bloodied knee. ‘You need to get up. The police could come back.’
‘What happened?’
‘The police turned the hoses on us.’ The statement was matter of fact. ‘Can you stand?’
‘I–I’m not sure.’ Winifred turned onto her stomach and raised herself on hands and knees. ‘Where’s Conal?’ she looked along the alleyway towards the street. The ground was covered in leaflets, torn and trampled underfoot. ‘Honora?’
‘I don’t know.’ The woman pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘I don’t know where anyone is. Except us,’ she added. ‘And we shouldn’t be here. Come on. You can come back with me, tidy yourself up. There’s nothing more we can do here. They’ve beaten us.’ She hauled Winifred to her feet. ‘For now.’
At the house the woman helped Winifred to clean herself up in the kitchen and found some clothes for her to change
into.
‘You needn’t bring them back,’ she whispered, looking nervously towards the door which led through to a large hall. ‘These are old and I have too many clothes anyway.’
Winifred stood, letting the woman fasten the tie on the navy skirt and the last of the buttons on a fine cotton blouse on her. ‘Just leave now. As quickly and quietly as you can.’ She walked round the back of Winifred, helping her to slide her arms into the matching navy three-quarter jacket.
‘Thank you.’ Winifred turned on the top step of three at the back door. The stone glistened in the dim light of the kitchen. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name.’
A church bell rang out in the distance; four doleful clangs. Winifred shivered.
‘You don’t need to know my name.’ Holding on to Winifred’s elbow she ushered her carefully down the steps. ‘Be careful, it’s icy underfoot.’ She pointed into the darkness. ‘Turn left at the top of the lane and walk towards the road you’ll see in front of you. That’s Tollmoor Road and the gas lamps should still be on. Carry straight on and you’ll see where the tram stops. If you hurry you’ll catch the first one.’
And that was it; the woman went up the steps and closed the door before Winifred, holding onto the wall, inched towards the road to make her way home.
Chapter 46
January 1912
They’d gone, Conal and Honora; both of them.
It was two months since the protest march. Christmas had passed with no celebration. Winifred had attended the services at the chapel without thought, had sat across the table from her mother and grandmother in silence as they ate the mean Christmas dinner of stew and dumplings. She’d served in the shop without uttering a word to anyone, aware of the barely hidden contempt of some of the women customers, the curiosity and outrage of the men. Let the malicious words that poured from Ethel’s lips wash over her. Bore the brunt of the pointed silence on the days her mother refused to speak to her. In reality, she preferred those days.
‘She’ll come round.’ Florence held Winifred’s hand. They were sitting side by side as they often did these days. Winifred had dragged the chair out of her bedroom and put it next to her grandmother’s. She gently rubbed the slice of onion over Florence’s red swollen fingers, her eyes watering against the sting of the pungent smell.
‘I don’t really care if she doesn’t.’ The silence that followed was a comfortable one. ‘There,’ Winifred said, ‘that should help.’ She wrung out a cloth from the bowl of warm water and, taking her grandmother’s hand between hers, smoothed it over the skin.
‘Thanks, Winnie.’ Florence smiled. ‘I can’t remember a winter when I didn’t have chilblains. Or a winter when the house didn’t stink all the time of onions.’
The laughed quietly.
‘I know.’ Winifred dried her hands. ‘When I was a child I thought you were always making onion soup and never understood why you didn’t offer some to me.’ She stood and stretched, fidgety against the trapped sensation that overcame her so often lately.
It had been a raw day. When Winifred had made a dash across the yard to the lavvy earlier her breath hung in front of her face like lace and the latch on the door burned the skin on her thumb with the icy cold. She’d shivered when she pulled her drawers down, the wooden seat chilly and damp under her buttocks. And, in the deadening quiet that the snow caused, she swore she heard the faint crackle of broken ice as her pee hit the frozen water.
Now, a few flakes still shuddered down past the windows but the snow, already banked up in the corners of the panes, began to slide away with the warmth of the room. Winifred had made sure they’d enough coal and slack to keep the fire going all night. At six o’clock in the evening it was black outside, the white lines of snow on top of the yard walls in stark contrast.
‘Are you—’
‘I’m fine, Granny.’ Winifred stopped the question. She swallowed, her whole throat working in one long gulp.
‘Because, if there is something, ducks, you know you can tell me.’
But Winifred couldn’t, even though she knew her grandmother cared so much for her.
She smiled, picking up the bowl of water. ‘I’ll take this downstairs and make us both some Horlicks.’
On the landing she stood leaning on the wall, sadness seeping through her like a dark wave.
She’d searched for Conal and Honora. Wandering the streets on the outskirts of Lydcroft, she’d looked everywhere she’d ever been with her friend or Conal. Only once, though, did she go back to Gilpin Street, to number fifty. New people were in there; rough tinkers she was afraid of. The women jeered at her and pulled their men inside, slamming the door in her face. The people who lurked in the doorways of empty houses, or peered suspiciously at her as she passed them in the ginnels and lanes, were strangers to her.
It was no use, they’d gone. And so, it seemed, had all their friends. One of the first places she went for help was to the vicarage. But when Dorothy opened the door, the bleakness in her face destroyed Winifred’s hope.
‘I’m sorry, Winifred, no-one has seen either Honora or her brother.’
‘I don’t understand it. Where would they go?’ Winifred followed her into the room where they’d first met. ‘What about Mildred or Anne? Have they seen them?’
‘Apparently not; I saw them yesterday and they had no news. I’m meeting them again later in Morrisfield; there’s a group get-together to discuss what happened and to organise our next protest. You’re welcome to come along.’
Winifred shuddered, remembering the horrific ending of the last.
Dorothy caught hold of her hands, her face sympathetic. ‘We didn’t really know Honora, you see; just through the WSPU. We really only found out where they were living last year, and that time with Sophie was the first time we’d been. Honora was, is, very much a free spirit. Her painting took up a lot of her time when she wasn’t involved in our fight. You saw her paintings?’
‘One or two.’ Winifred was trembling with impatience. Honora’s painting was the last thing she wanted to discuss.
‘They are exquisite. Self-taught, she told us once. Mostly portraits of people from families her brother knew from the university he was at in Leeds; doctors, specialists, the like, you know.’ Dorothy hesitated. ‘Perhaps some of them might know what’s happened to her?’
‘Do you know any of them? Her customers?’
‘Sorry, no. I suppose you could ask at the university, though. Her brother should be there, surely?’
After Winifred had adamantly refused to go with her to the meeting with Mildred and Anne, there seemed to be little else that Dorothy could, or was willing, to say.
Winifred couldn’t even get past the doors of the university. After the best part of a day travelling to Leeds, the porter had viewed her with suspicion. His only concession had been to send a messenger to find Conal. The boy returned with the news that Mr O’Reilly hadn’t been to lectures for weeks. And was about to be sent down.
Each night she sobbed, hiding her face in her pillow to smother the sound. She was surprised that neither of the women she lived with heard her. Or noticed her swollen eyes some mornings. Or perhaps her grandmother had, maybe that was why she often studied her with a steady gaze. As though she was willing Winifred to talk.
But Winifred couldn’t. Although she ached for Conal, she didn’t sleep. The guilt lay like a stone in her stomach whenever she thought of how far she’d fallen. How could she tell her grandmother?
None of them mentioned that time Winifred hadn’t got home until five o’clock. And she hadn’t seen the woman who’d helped her in the alleyway after the march again. Even though she’d told Winifred not to go back to the house, she had, in the hopes the woman might have seen something after Winifred lost consciousness. But no-one answered the door, even though Winifred could have sworn she saw the curtains move at one of the upstairs windows.
Chapter 47
March 1912
The days had little pu
rpose. When she wasn’t silently serving in the shop Winifred was lying on her bed. Some days she cried, the tears slipping down the sides of her face into her hair. At night she stared into the darkness reliving that last day; that last time she’d seen Conal.
Those were the worst times. At least that was what she’d thought.
Through the thin curtains the fuzzy pale glow of the full moon was splintered by the frost patterns on the windows. She didn’t need to see the faint plume of breath coming from her mouth to know how cold it was; when she touched her nose with the back of her hand it was freezing. The sharp bark of the Jack Russell had been followed by a rattle of peas on her mother’s bedroom window. She heard the irritable shout intended both for her and for the knocker-upper man.
Unwilling to leave the warmth of her bed, Winifred fumbled around for her drawers off the rail-stand and dragged them under the bedclothes. She wriggled out of her thick cotton nightdress and into her underclothes and lay back summoning up the courage to get up to face the Monday morning stock-taking.
Flinging the covers back she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and, grabbing her corset, stood up. Wrapping the corset around her she pulled at the laces.
The cold prickle that crept over her skin stopped her fingers. Slowly she lifted her eyes to the mirror. The dark shadows underneath them were a stark contrast to the white of her face. She swallowed against the thickness that rose in her throat, letting her gaze travel down her body.
The weight that had fallen from her in the months after Conal had gone was now replaced by a fullness in her breasts and waist, a roundness of her stomach.
Her legs gave way under her and she dropped onto the bed, her mind flickering back over the last weeks, trying to place when she’d started to heave at the smell of the cheese as she cut it into blocks to wrap in brown greaseproof paper. And how long ago, when putting on her bust bodice, had her nipples become tender against the material. Or the strange feelings in her body she’d ignored in her misery.
She hadn’t had her monthlies. Conal had explained to her why there were certain times that they couldn’t fully make love, and she’d soon learned to keep a note of her monthlies’ dates. But something must have gone wrong.
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