by Wendy Jones
‘What lies in the future, no one can tell. The women’s movement will go forward, as all other movements for human progress will go forward. No woman of today would go back if she could to the conditions her grandmother suffered. No matron would agree to put on her cap and retire from life at thirty-five.’
Grace began to listen.
Back in the dormitory at the Ritz, Grace took off her coat and put her feet on the dormitory bed despite still wearing her shoes. It was a small rebellion; perhaps it was because of the Suffragette meeting she’d been to earlier that afternoon, with all those independently-minded women. Grace lay back and felt the warm ache of her exhausted body.
She adjusted her corset, which was tight but fitted and did the job. She could have loosened it, but didn’t—kept it on, even at night. One mustn’t let oneself go, the shop assistant had admonished. No, one mustn’t. She tore a piece from the loaf of bread she was keeping in her bedside cabinet drawer, hard now because it had lasted her five days. She was hungry, but she wanted above all things to keep her figure. The corset helped keep her flat and shapeless.
Hilda burst in: ‘The housekeeper wants to see you now. You’re to wait in her office.’ She tutted excitedly. ‘You must be in trouble.’
Grace got up, put on her cap and went down the shabby servants’ stairs to the housekeeper’s office, uncertain of why she was being summoned. But then she knew from her mother that it wasn’t necessary to do something wrong to be in trouble. The office was empty and the door open so she stood and waited in front of the small, sharply-cornered desk. There was a rap on the open door. She turned.
There was her brother Madoc. Grace leaped forward and slammed the door, her heart racing. Fear rode over her like wild horses stampeding; she thought she might faint. There was another knock at the door. The key wasn’t in the lock.
‘Grace?’ her brother said quietly, his voice reverberating on the wood of the door. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she tried to shift the bolt, banging the handle of it with her fist. The bolt was stuck fast.
‘Grace, really!’ she heard her brother’s voice. She stood back from the unlocked door. Why had he come? What did he want? How did he find her? What would he do?
‘Grace, don’t be silly. Open the door! What if that housekeeper comes? You’ll be in real trouble then. And I’ve come all this way to find you.’ She heard the force and impatience in his voice. ‘Grace!’ He said her name as if he owned it. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want him to see her . . . she didn’t want to be in the same room as him, the same city as him, the same country. What was he doing here? She had thought he was in Egypt. He must be on leave.
‘I was right,’ she heard him say triumphantly through the door. ‘I knew you’d come to London.’ She heard what sounded like Madoc leaning against the doorframe, the buttons of his military uniform knocking against the door. ‘Because you liked Peter Pan as a child and wanted to go to Kensington Gardens.’ Grace had forgotten that. ‘You made me play Peter Pan with you.’
There was a pause and the irritated thrum of fingers on the wood. ‘Then it was a matter of finding the places a Welsh girl would go. I tried the Eglwys Jewin Chapel yesterday but they hadn’t heard of you, then the hotels, and you’d stayed in the Pembroke Lodging House for a few days a couple of months ago. They said you’d left to work here. You were easy to find among the London Welsh,’ Madoc said. ‘Mam says the apple never falls very far from the tree.’
Grace stood staring at the door.
‘Come on, Grace. Open the door. Let me in. Is it locked?’ And with that he turned the handle and opened the door.
‘There we are, see? That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Madoc punched her arm lightly, jokingly. ‘What a hotel you’re working in, sis! It’s not like the Dragon Inn.’ Then Madoc looked around the housekeeper’s stark, functional room. If I had a cleaver, I would bring it down on him now, Grace thought. But then an unexpected rush of vulnerability came over her: a wave of homesickness for her father, even her mother, her home, her town—everything she had left.
‘Lost your tongue?’
‘No.’
‘You’re as cool as a stream up the mountain.’
Grace stood there formally, her hands folded in front of her, her soul somewhere else, just a broken casket decorated with polite responses and gestures, like an empty vase mishandled by a previous owner.
‘Back from Egypt last week . . . stationed in London for six months. Come on, Grace, can’t you do better than this? I’ve come from the barracks in Chelsea, taken two days’ leave looking for you. Father told me to, he was worried you hadn’t written—and all you do is stand there like some . . . I don’t know what, and not saying anything. Look, I brought you this.’ He took a pink wooden box from his knapsack: Turkish Delight. The moment Grace saw the sweets she knew she didn’t want them. In her mind’s eye she saw a knife smash down on the confectionery.
‘You look well.’ Madoc put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Good to see you, sis.’
Grace was repelled. Was this his way of saying sorry?
He looked around the room, assessing it, dismissing it. ‘I came earlier; the housekeeper said to come back at seven o’clock when you’d be back from your half-day.’ He put the third finger of his left hand to his mouth, bit down hard on the skin and looked down at his shiny black boots.
‘Sergeant now,’ he said, tapping the three gold stripes on his uniform. ‘For Highly Responsible Behaviour. Mam’s pleased. And I’m engaged.’ He smiled and looked at the floor. Grace examined him, stared at him defiantly, daring him to do something, giving him a chance to confess. ‘Girl called Dorothy,’ he said weakly. ‘Army’s good to me. You’re looking well.’
She threw a glance over him. Why wasn’t he leaving?
‘Glad it all turned out well. Wilfred went, I heard. Good riddance to bad stuff.’ He was dallying. ‘Chambermaid?’ Grace nodded. He nodded back. The clock chimed on the mantelpiece.
‘Let the dead bury the dead,’ he said with the authenticity of a false priest offering an olive branch that promised no peace. ‘Looks like you’ll be here a few months. You coming back to Narberth?’
Grace said nothing, did nothing.
‘As I said, good riddance to bad stuff.’ He pursed his lips together and frowned. ‘Mam’s furious. She won’t even speak your name. She doesn’t know Father told me to look for you.’ He looked around the room disinterestedly, arrogantly. ‘I’ll tell Father I’ve seen you. Grace—’ He held out his hand to shake but Grace didn’t take it. He stamped his feet, saluted cockily instead, the metal half-moons on the heels of his boots clicking frantically on the bare floor so that the lampstand oscillated violently on the desk.
‘I could always come again soon—now that I’ve found you.’ He turned around and walked out with a swagger, putting his hand up to wave behind him. Grace stood there looking through the opened door into the emptiness. ‘Take you for tea next time,’ he called.
It was her first afternoon off since Madoc had turned up. Grace looked around Mrs. Garrud’s drawing room while she waited for the Suffragettes’ self-defence class to begin. The drawing room was on the first floor of an elegant townhouse in a square in Islington. She had arrived with Mary Richardson, whom she’d met at Highbury and Islington underground station. Grace was curious about the Suffragettes, if uncommitted.
Grace noticed the stuffed birds petrified in a glass cabinet—the jade and turquoise of a bird of paradise, the kingfisher’s feathers caching the light, the nightingales on a brittle, dusty perch.
‘One should never have a glass case of dead songbirds—they’re ghastly,’ Mrs. Garrud, a tiny woman, said to Grace. ‘I know you’re thinking it. But they belonged to my late Mama and she would simply turn in her grave if they were auctioned at Sotheby’s. Many people collect taxidermy to display in their drawing rooms, but that’s not why I keep them; i
t’s from fear of being haunted.’
‘With your reputation I wouldn’t have thought you were afraid of anything,’ Lady Lytton remarked.
‘Ah, but one can’t practise jujutsu on ghosts. Only policemen—and those who show violence against our Cause,’ Mrs. Garrud retorted. ‘You’re from Wales, Miss Rice, and so am I. The Valleys. Is that a Pembrokeshire accent?’
Grace nodded. Mrs. Garrud smiled.
‘Now, prepare yourselves for the class, ladies. If one is going to join a war, one needs to fight. If one is going to be a Suffragette, one must practise jujutsu.’
The group of eight women undid their shoes and slipped out of them.
‘Come next to me, Grace,’ Lady Lytton offered, shaking out her auburn hair and retying it into a loose chignon. Grace didn’t move. One woman unclipped her drop pearl earrings and placed them in a cloisonné bowl.
‘Yes, do remove your jewels,’ Mrs. Garrud encouraged.
Mary Richardson shyly patted face powder on her birthmark.
‘One shouldn’t be self-conscious about these things,’ she admitted to Lady Lytton and Grace, who was slowly untying her shoelaces. ‘Mummy says beauty is on the inside, but I feel—’
‘Notice,’ Mrs. Garrud interrupted—her small stature meant she had to look up at the attentive women—‘we practise Suffragette self-defence in our everyday clothes, as one is not arrested breaking expensive pane-glass, setting alight haystacks, or indeed attacking the Rokeby Venus in Mary’s case, wearing the customary jujutsu uniform. I forgot to say: one must not practise jujutsu during the monthly menstruation. If any ladies are so incapacitated, do please make yourself comfortable on the ottoman, and watch closely.’
‘I will sit out,’ said Grace quickly, grateful for the chance to observe but not participate, and resting on a hardback chair next to the frozen birds.
‘If one is already imprisoned for an illegal, but not immoral, act, one may well be wearing a prison suit. This makes jujutsu so very much easier than when wearing a corset with stays. Do wear a drop-waist frock, girls, if you are intending to take military action. I tell all my warriors this. And short hair is preferable. As many Suffragettes who have been arrested are aware, long hair makes us vulnerable. It can be grabbed and held in a way that cropped hair cannot.’
A sliver of memory came to Grace, of Madoc with a fistful of her hair, holding her rigid, her face pressed into the brown wallpaper. If she could have kicked backward, or elbowed back . . . but she had stood there meek as a lamb. Regret washed through her. She was still shocked that Madoc had appeared at the Ritz last week, appalled that he had found her. She had never wanted to see him again. And if she ever saw Madoc again . . .?
‘Ladies, place one foot forward, one foot back, hands up, head down, always ready for your opponent. If a police constable pushes you, you will be able to balance and he can’t knock you over.’ The women positioned themselves as Mrs. Garrud directed.
‘Miss Rice, ring the servant’s bell on the wall by the ottoman, please. My maid will bring you a pot of tea and a slice of cake. She can be rather slatternly, I’m ashamed to say, but she comes upstairs eventually. Mary, demonstrate tomoe-nage—the stomach throw—on me please, if you would.’
Mary Richardson put her legs wide apart to an unladylike degree. She focused; her birthmark turned a more intense cerise and made a deep seepage on her temple and cheek. Then she grabbed Mrs. Garrud’s collar, put her foot on the teacher’s stomach, lay down on her back and threw the instructor over her head. It took only a moment. The crystals of the chandelier swung and Mrs. Garrud stood up, unperturbed. Grace had no idea an adult woman could be so agile. She had thought flexibility and agility were passing phases owned and enjoyed by small children and adult acrobats.
‘Ladies, practise the stomach throw in pairs, please. Remember, it takes knowledge, rather than strength. Even if we are, as Lady Penelope is, a painter, or like Mabel, a milliner, we can all achieve this move.’
Grace watched the women. If she could have chopped the air like these women were and hit out against Madoc and kicked her leg in that free, strong way into his well-fed, well-satisfied stomach . . . If she could have darted left and right, sure of each manoeuvre, and known the Art of War, as these women were taught it, she could have stood against the brown wallpaper in the landing at home and swerved and kicked and ultimately escaped. Madoc might have come back at her, but their parents would have been horrified by their son hitting their daughter. Grace would have been the exonerated victim rather than the whorish one who must now run and hide, while Madoc basked in the golden glow of his metal military buttons and his silver sergeant’s stripes.
‘Give the cake to Miss Rice, please,’ Mrs. Garrud told the maid. ‘Hurry, we haven’t got all day.’ The maid stomped sullenly across the Arabian carpet, placing the silver tea tray on a cherrywood occasional table. Grace folded her hands, one over the other, so the maid wouldn’t see that she had maids’ hands too, and was a fraud in the house of the waited-upon.
While the maid poured her tea from the silver teapot, Grace watched Lady Lytton almost gracefully hold a woman in a headlock and the other ladies leaping, throwing and landing, while the glass cabinet of dead birds quivered. The kingfisher, tied less securely to its golden branch, shook as if it might be alive.
‘Goodness!’ exclaimed Mrs. Garrud, looking at the rattling piece of furniture.
These women could defend themselves, Grace thought.
‘Do have at least a morsel of cake,’ Mrs. Garrud said to her. ‘And relax, ladies. Jujutsu is not unlike ballet, only instead of trying to turn women into swans—a hugely pointless pursuit—it can turn women into warriors. And to build a better country, we need to be warriors. Is that not right, girls?’ There was a round of applause from the ladies and Mary called, ‘Bravo!’
These weren’t merely words spoken in a meeting hall, or an X on a ballot sheet, Grace realised: this was the ability to kick back. This, more than anything, was the power she had wanted and hadn’t known existed and couldn’t have now: her body was too burdened to fight. But Grace was beginning to understand that women could have power—and not only like her mother, through the power of cruel words—but in her body and her mind, and maybe, if she could vote, in her town and her country.
‘You haven’t had one piece of pineapple upside-down cake, Grace. And you look so rapt. May I ask what you are thinking?’ Lady Lytton asked kindly. Grace demurred and picked up a book lying nearby.
‘I want you to practise these moves in your drawing rooms or lodgings every day for a quarter of an hour,’ Mrs. Garrud advised her pupils. ‘The class is dismissed until next Wednesday. And let us remember as we go about our work, the Suffragette virtues of dignity, purity and hope.’
Grace noticed how the women stood taller and prouder as they dressed themselves after the lesson, as if they had more dimensions, their cheeks more colour, from learning to defend themselves. In Narberth, did women fight? These women in London were free in their bodies, not imprisoned by them. If she had stayed in Narberth she wouldn’t have known about jujutsu. How contrary that she should find herself in this drawing room at a demonstration of how women could defend themselves, when she was less able to twist and jump and turn than ever before. When the battle was over and the victory won at her expense.
7.
TO BE MORE TO HER THAN HE WAS
Under the gate, catch your sheep, bring it back, off jumps Jack. Flora Myffanwy remembered the knitting rhyme she had learned at school. She spread the stitches along the needle and counted them. It was a dark winter’s day; the sunlight came thinly through the kitchen window but the fire in the hearth was flickering. The light in the room was beautiful. Suddenly she remembered she was expecting: each day, throughout the day, she had bright moments of remembering she was expecting a baby, and, as the days went by, the life inside her grew more precious and defined to her.
She knitted a row of garter stitch and looked around the scullery, noticing the smudges on the window, the spanners on the shelf, the knickknacks in jam jars. It was clear to her that Wilfred and his da didn’t know to cook, clean and keep house. It was said that cleanliness was next to Godliness, but Flora wasn’t sure about that; she thought gentleness was next to Godliness, and cleanliness was next to respectability. Wilfred and his da had lived happily and warmly in their chaotic and perhaps none-too-clean kitchen, providing as much comfort as they could for themselves, and making their slightly wobbly wattle and daub house into a home. And, recently, also a paint and wallpaper shop.
She purled twenty stitches: the needles Wilfred had made her were beautifully crafted in white oak and exceptionally smooth. It was true to say that when she had married Wilfred in the summer and first came to live at 11, Market Street she had been taken aback by the snail trails on the walls and the unaired rooms that smelled like old leather. There were odd tools on the floor and a spade in the kitchen sink. Wilfred had tidied the house especially, to the very best of his ability, for her arrival. She smiled, remembering Wilfred as he had shown her around, bashfully acknowledging that his earnest attempts were woefully short of anything that could be called acceptable housekeeping. Flora knew Wilfred had needed a wife.
Flora unwound more of the ball of string she was knitting with and laid the loose string across her lap. If she had married Albert . . . In her mind’s eye she saw Alfred run his hands through his hair and throw back his head, laughing. When the telegram came stating that Albert had died, Flora had been glad that they had made love, that they knew that of each other, and she had the memory of Albert experiencing that pleasure. She was still comforted by the thought they had loved fully together; and even if that intimacy had been so truncated, it remained their secret. When she was intimate with Wilfred she couldn’t help feeling he seemed distracted, almost as if he was thinking about something else. But what else could he be thinking of?