by Terri Nixon
I faced the front again as the first of the speeches began, and before five minutes had passed I knew I’d been right to come in. The anti-suffragists might well have supported women’s votes in local elections, but what was the use in that, if we were to have no say in Parliament? Nothing had changed, after all. I turned to Will to tell him we could go now, and as I did so, out of the corner of my eye I saw a small, tight band of women in WSPU colours move into the aisle and towards the stage with firm, purposeful strides.
One was holding a bucket of water which I assumed would soon be flung at the speaker, but two more waved an anti-suffrage banner, which surprised me until a flare of light made it all horrifically clear; a fourth Suffragette had touched a lighted match to the edge of the banner, and the flame took hold quickly. More quickly, it seemed, than the two ladies holding the banner had foreseen, and one of them dropped it with a shout. She stumbled backwards into the woman holding the bucket ready, just for this purpose I now realised, and the bucket thudded to the floor, spilling its contents.
‘Drop it in the water!’ someone cried, and the woman threw the burning banner towards where the carpet was wettest, but the water had soaked away and the fire burned greedily across the carpet and licked at the legs of the chairs closest to the stage. Panic was rippling through the people close enough to see what had happened, and although the fire was not a big one, it was spreading fast. Those who’d been seated closest to the aisle scrambled over their neighbours’ knees, while those who hadn’t fully grasped what was happening merely stared about them, bemused and in the way.
Will had seized my hand and started pulling the moment the banner had landed, or we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Someone shoved into me from behind and I nearly fell, but managed to keep my feet, and from behind me I could hear shouts and screams, and someone yelled that they had the fire extinguisher, and to stand back. But it was too late; panic had swept the room, mostly through those who couldn’t see what was happening, and although the fire was quickly brought under control, hysteria propelled people towards exits that were soon jammed.
The next time someone hit me from behind I knew I wouldn’t fall; there was nowhere to fall into. I, in turn, barrelled into the person in front, a woman who turned and shrieked into my face. Luckily I couldn’t hear her words or I might have let my own anger loose. Will’s arm came around my shoulder and I took comfort from his presence, while fighting the urge to shove with all my strength, to get through, to find a clear space and fresh air.
The noise level had risen by now to a deafening, shrill cacophony of voices, some begging for calm, others, like the woman in front of me, simply screaming in fearful frustration. Will’s strength held firm beside me, and he lowered his mouth to my ear so I could hear him without straining.
‘Steady, and keep moving. Don’t let go of me.’ He wrapped my arms around his waist, and whenever I stumbled he tightened his grip on my shoulder and kept talking to me in a low, steady voice to calm my shredded nerves. A crash sounded from up near the stage, and we turned to see the front row of people had tried to exit through the back of the stage, but brought down one of the scenery pillars which had been supporting the proscenium arch. The whole thing collapsed, and now the screams were terrible, and people were lying beneath the fallen scenery.
We were at the door now, bruised and shaken, but as I stumbled out into the blessed freedom of the lobby I felt Will’s hand drop away from my shoulder and he eased me away from him, holding my arms.
‘Go out onto the street,’ he said, urgent now. ‘I’ll meet you there.’
Before I could question him, he’d fought his way back into the auditorium, thrusting his way through the people still spilling out, who nevertheless parted instinctively to let him past. I was about to follow when a weeping voice stopped me, and I looked around to see a young girl in WSPU colours, sobbing and holding her arm across her chest. I felt a flash of anger towards her at first, then remembered my own recent, passionate beliefs in the movement, and drew her carefully out of the crowd where I could help her better.
For the most part my mind was with Will as he went back inside to help where he could, but I was able to lend half an ear to the girl, who was Scottish, very pretty, and about my own age. Her sobs, it turned out, were not for her injured arm, but for her little sister.
‘Please help me find her!’
‘How old is she?’
‘Twelve.’
My anger flooded back. ‘What on earth were you thinking, bringing such a young girl along to a rally?’
‘I wanted her to understand how important it all is,’ the girl said earnestly. ‘She needs to learn how the –’
‘Stop!’ I held up my hand. ‘I don’t need a lecture, you little idiot! Wait here, and don’t go anywhere. What’s her name?’ I looked around, but couldn’t see any children.
‘Helen. She has black hair and is wearing a green dress.’
I placed the young Suffragette firmly in a corner, where I could be reasonably sure of finding her again, then I followed Will’s example and pushed back into the auditorium.
Inside all was still chaos in the aisles, although most of the rows of seats were free of people now. I looked helplessly around, realising a twelve-year-old girl would be almost impossible to spot. Then I had an idea, and climbed over the back of the rear-most seats onto the ones in front, scanning the crowds as I went. From my vantage point I saw Will, helping a hobbling woman to a seat, and judged by the way she half-rose and then settled down, that he’d convinced her of the relative safety of staying where she was.
Taking my cue from his common sense, I climbed back down and began speaking to the people nearest me.
‘The fire’s out! It’s safe here, don’t push! Just sit down and wait, and you’ll get out quicker, and without injury! Sit down, just wait…’
Gradually the word seemed to filter through, and the shoving eased off. I began to ask people if they’d seen a twelve-year-old girl in a green dress but noone had. Just when I was starting to despair of ever finding her, and assumed she must have made her way outside after all, I saw a crumpled form near the edge of the stage. It was dressed in green. I scrambled back over the seats, my skirts held high, not caring who was watching, and yelled to Will, pointing with my free hand. We reached her at the same time, and I laid my hand on her back.
She jerked upright, gasping and terrified, and I could see blood matting her dark fringe.
‘Hush, Helen, it’s all right,’ I soothed.
She stared at me. ‘How do you know my name?’
‘Your sister has been looking for you,’ I said. ‘Sit still a moment, let’s make sure you’re fit to move.’
Will and I helped her to a sitting position, and I looked her over carefully. ‘Did you faint at all?’
‘I was hit on the head by something, but I didnae faint. I was a’scairt the rest of the scenery would come down on me, so I stayed curled up.’ The little girl had a lilting accent just like her sister’s, and would grow into a similar beauty one day. For now though she was tear-streaked and frightened, and hiccupped her way through a list of her bumps and bruises. None of them seemed serious, but Will asked her if she’d mind if he carried her anyway, just to be sure. She looked at him in awe and shook her head, and he scooped her up, carrying her easily and carefully through the thinning crowd.
I found the elder sister where I’d left her, and she swooped down on Helen with a cry of relief as Will lowered her carefully to the floor. ‘There y’are ya wee rascal! What did I tell ye about staying close?’
‘She was hit by some falling scenery,’ Will said, and the reproach in his voice halted the girl’s harangue. ‘I’m sure she’s fine, but you should get a doctor to look at her, she’s cut her head.’
‘I’m all right,’ Helen said in a small voice, and smiled shyly up at Will. I looked at him too, seeing him through her eyes, and felt a stirring of hero-worship myself. I met his embarrassed eyes and gave him a little smi
le.
‘We have a train to catch,’ I said. The two girls thanked us profusely, and as we left we could hear them talking excitedly about what had happened, and heard the older girl make Helen promise not to tell their parents what had happened.
Will grinned down at me and took my hand. ‘How about you, Florence Nightingale, are you all right?’
‘I’m better than that,’ I told him, ‘I’m a little bit more in love with you than I was before, if that’s possible.’
He laughed and waved a dismissive hand, but I was serious. I’d seen another side to him today: a courage that balanced the fun-loving side, and a calm strength that settled him just a little deeper into my heart. Walking beside him back towards the station I wanted everyone to know the bone-deep beauty of this man, and what he was capable of. I wanted people to look at me and envy me, and I wanted him to know how unutterably proud of him I was.
But if the day had shown me a new Will Davies, it had also shown me a new Evie Creswell, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. On the train, sitting close to him, I broached the question that had been bothering me. ‘Will, am I different?’
‘Different?’
‘To what I was. To the way you saw me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s just, today…’ I hesitated, wondering if I was courting trouble even putting the thought in his head. ‘I mean, all this time you’ve told me you admired me for my beliefs, and principles, and the way I could make you believe things too. Lizzy was the same. But now, after what happened, I feel as if…how could I let something like this shake those beliefs? But it has.’
He twisted in his seat and took my hands. ‘Evie, listen to me. We’re still growing into what we will eventually become. If everyone waited until they believed they were fully formed before deciding they loved someone, the human race would die out. We’re never “finished”, so of course our ideals will change, we’ll change.’
‘But do you think we’ll change too much?’
‘Do you mean will I stop loving you? Tell me this, will you stop loving me if I change?’
‘No!’
‘And nothing will ever make me think you’re not worth my whole life, Evie. I will never, ever give up on you, and I want you to promise the same.’
I looked at him, I saw the earnest truth in his face, and I spoke from the heart, not suspecting how the weight of the words would return one day to reshape our lives. ‘I pledge my life on it.’
Chapter Six
Breckenhall Quarry, July 1914.
‘Will you go?’
‘Yes, if they call us.’
I shivered, despite the warmth of the day. The news from Europe was increasingly disturbing, and I could tell Mother was becoming more and more concerned about Uncle Jack. His letters had been scarce, and very short, but if it hadn’t been for those brief notes it would have been more worrying still. Now, though, my attention was fixed closer to home, and I looked sideways at Will, who sat with his knees raised and his hands drooped between them.
‘It may not come to it,’ he said, feeling the weight of my gaze, and turning to me. His eyes held mine and we both knew he didn’t believe that any more than I did.
‘If you go, I’m going to find a way to volunteer, too,’ I said. The words were out of my mouth before I’d realised I was going to say them, but the determination took hold nevertheless. ‘If all the boys join up, the girls will have to pitch in and take up the slack.’
He grinned. ‘I can just see you up to your elbows in pig entrails,’ he said, and threw a handful of grass at me.
‘Well, maybe not your job,’ I conceded, and returned the favour, hitting him squarely in the mouth with a lucky throw. While he spluttered and spat out the grass, I lay back and stared up at the sky, wondering how something as perfect and clear, and such a beautiful, rich blue could be looking down on a world so full of uncertainty and fear.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, and something in his voice made me raise myself onto my elbows again.
‘What? You sound nervous.’
‘Not nervous exactly. It’s just…with what’s probably coming and all, don’t you think –’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t know what I was going to say!’
‘Yes I do.’ I smiled and sat up all the way, slipping my hand beneath his knee to link my fingers with his, and said it again, slowly. ‘Yes. I do.’
He returned my smile, and the tension left him. ‘Well then, now you’ll have to tell your mother.’
‘No. I mean, yes, I will, but I’m going to tell her afterwards. I can’t give her the slightest opportunity to put a stop to it.’
‘How on earth will you keep it from her? The vicar at Breckenhall is bound to say something.’
‘Then we won’t marry in Breckenhall. We’ll find somewhere further away. I hope Uncle Jack comes home in time, he’d be pleased to give me away.’
‘Even to me?’
‘Especially to you,’ I said. Jack Carlisle would take one look at Will and me together, and not a single question would pass his lips about suitability or income. And if I asked him to leave it to me to tell Mother, he would do it. ‘I’ll find somewhere with a discreet minister, and we can set a date for sometime before Christmas. That’s bound to give us time, and maybe the Kaiser will call off the show and leave Russia alone, and it will all come to nothing.’
But just two days later, on the first day of August, Germany declared war on Russia. The news came over the radio that, in order for them to remove France as a hindrance, they had asked for permission to move their army through Belgium, and, while the world listened with bated breath, Belgium held her ground and refused.
‘But what does that mean?’ Mother fretted. ‘For us?’
‘It means that, if the Kaiser doesn’t withdraw his army, we’re going to have to go in and make him,’ I said. I felt quite sick and, despite my calm words, I was having a great deal of trouble straightening my thoughts to really understand what it all meant.
‘Why do we have to do it?’ She glanced over at Lawrence, and I could see the worry on her face. ‘It’s got nothing to do with us, surely?’
‘Evidently it’s to do with a treaty made back in the 1830s,’ I said, not adding that it was Will who’d told me about it. ‘Perhaps the Germans will withdraw when they realise what they’ve done, and that they can’t win.’
But of course, they hadn’t. Our government sent an ultimatum that was ignored, and by eleven o’clock on the night of the fourth of August, we too were at war.
To begin with, nothing seemed different. The sun still shone; night and day still came and went; people still went to work, only now their expressions slipped too easily from cheerfulness to shadowed fear. But gradually the little changes that were happening all over the country began to make themselves felt in everyday life. Shops closed as their owners answered the call to arms; the government put out a further call, for one hundred thousand volunteers, and Will joined the reserves. I tried to hold on to the common belief that the war would be short-lived, maybe even over before Christmas, but it seemed more and more evident now that this would be a protracted struggle, and that our men were being sent into a special kind of hell; the thought of Will joining them made me break into a cool sweat and pray constantly for the war to end before it was too late.
One afternoon in late August, Will met me at the quarry with an unusually sombre expression, and his face was pale. I saw immediately what he held, and my breathing sharpened into something painful.
‘When?’
‘Tenth of September.’
‘Oh, God. Oh, God, Will…’
He seized me roughly and pulled me to him with a strange, sighing sob. All the enthusiasm when he’d spoken of joining up, of doing his duty, of protecting the innocent, had fled as we held each other, and I felt him shuddering under my fiercely gripping hands. It made the way he finally squared his shoulders and stood straight all the more courageous i
n my eyes; he was not naïve enough to think he was riding into glory, the shining hero of the tale. He understood some of what he was going into, and he was terrified, but he would still do it.
‘I must marry you before I leave,’ he said, and touched my face. ‘I must.’
I thought quickly. ‘We’ll go to Gretna. Mary will be a witness, and you must find one too.’ I spoke fast, hoping the trembling in my voice wasn’t as obvious to him as it was to me. My mind was not on weddings, though, it was on the letter I’d been mulling over for a week or more, applying for a post with the Red Cross, and I hesitated no longer; if Will was going overseas in defence of another country, I could do no less in defence of his own.
Gretna, Scotland, September 1914.
‘This is Martin Barrow,’ Will said as he drew me into the little sitting room. ‘He’s taking my place as Markham’s apprentice, once … well, once I’ve left.’
‘Very nice to meet you, Martin,’ I said.
He shook my hand, a tall, earnest-looking young man with a friendly face. ‘Miss,’ he said. He glanced at Will, and then back at me, and to my surprise he looked a little shamefaced. ‘I’d have joined up too, if I could,’ he said, and it was only when he limped over to close the sitting room door that I realised why he hadn’t. I wished he didn’t look so guilty over it, but it wasn’t my place to presume how he felt, I might have read him wrong.
I gestured to my own companion. ‘This is Mary Deegan, ,’ I said. ‘I understand you’ll be travelling back to Breckenhall together on the same train.’
The two nodded to each other, and as Mary went over to introduce herself properly, Will slipped his arm around my waist. ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ he said, nuzzling my ear.
‘And I can’t believe I haven’t told Mother,’ I said, and sighed. ‘I know she’ll take it badly but it’s not you, it’s…’