No Greater Love

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Maggie made a supreme effort to pull herself together, blowing hard into John’s cotton handkerchief.

  ‘Look at her, John,’ she insisted. ‘Look at her before we leave and know that she exists.’

  Reluctantly John picked up the picture and glanced at the stubborn-faced child that challenged him. He was struck immediately by how like Maggie she was, the same oval eyes and determined mouth. It was a sudden relief to him that Christabel held no resemblance to George Gordon and he thought sadly how he could have cared for this child, even grown to love her.

  Maggie heard his small involuntary gasp. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘No, it’s nothing,’ he stammered. ‘I just thought…’

  ‘What, John?’ Maggie persisted. ‘Tell me, please.’

  John took a deep breath and pointed to something in the background of the photograph. Maggie peered at the out-of-focus building behind Christabel. She had been far too absorbed in the girl to notice anything else.

  ‘Does it remind you of anywhere?’ he asked, almost in a whisper. ‘Look at the domes; cupolas they call them.’

  Maggie knew at once what he was thinking. She froze at his side.

  ‘Oxford Hall?’ she whispered.

  John nodded ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘The Pearsons?’ Maggie gasped. ‘Please God, no!’

  But as she stared again at the well-dressed child in front of the hazy mansion, she was afraid John was right. Suddenly she thought of Alice Pearson and her love of photography and wondered if her adversary had been the one to capture Christabel’s puzzled gaze.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Armistice was declared on 11 November, and just before eleven o’clock the noise of clanging and hammering in the shipyards stopped. Trams halted, horses were held and children in the playgrounds stood still; the world seemed to hold its breath as the bugles sounded out the end to the war. Maggie had been crossing town on her way back from seeing Susan when the hour struck.

  With the traffic and bustle of the city calmed, she could hear clearly the chirp of birds. The moment was unexpectedly poignant as everyone around her became lost in their own private world of remembrance. She thought sadly of George, though the pain of grief for him had lessened since her fondness for John had grown, and her new agony over losing Christabel to the Pearsons overshadowed all other emotions.

  After their depressing trip to Hebron Children’s Home, Maggie had scoured the local press for any mention of another child in the Pearson household. She could find no announcements about a daughter but she found a picture of the MP, Herbert Pearson, shaking hands with Red Cross workers with his family arrayed behind him. There stood his thin wife and a boy of about eight or nine dressed in a fashionable sailor’s suit. Beside him was a small girl with dark ringlets under a fur hat. The photograph in the newspaper was blurred, but Maggie was convinced the girl was Christabel.

  For a week she had rowed with John about confronting the Pearsons and asking for her daughter back, but he had been firmly against any action. There was no law to protect orphans or to give her the right to claim Christabel, he pointed out endlessly. Maggie had grown so desperate she thought of posing as a nursemaid and snatching Christabel, but she knew such action would be futile. It was her helplessness and rage that kept her pounding the streets of Newcastle, unable to settle to her work at the Co-operative Guild or return home to her husband.

  But for these few brief moments, she was forced to be still. The quietness wrapped itself round her like healing bandages and she realised she was so tired of fighting. Her desire to see Christabel gnawed at her like toothache but for the first time she doubted her own strength to carry on the battle. There seemed to be too much opposition ranged against her, she thought bleakly.

  As the traffic moved again, Maggie turned for home, thinking suddenly of her brother Jimmy. As far as she knew, Tich had survived the carnage in Flanders and for that at least she was thankful. Maggie felt a faint lifting of her mood to think she might see her brother again soon.

  That night the sky was lit with bonfires burning all night on the slag heaps around the edge of the town and people took down the dark green blinds from their windows so that the whole street shone with cheery light.

  Later in the week a ‘Victory Tea’ was held in the street, with tables dragged out onto the cobbles and Union Jacks strung along the railings. Somehow the women managed to produce a feast of cakes and fruit and ham sandwiches for the children to enjoy, and talked to them excitedly of their fathers coming home. Maggie would have preferred to hide indoors but Millie and John persuaded her to join in the street party.

  Maggie watched numbly until one small girl from the house across the street, who often chose her doorstep on which to play her games of ‘house’, climbed onto her knee. Suddenly, to Maggie’s consternation, Sally burst into tears.

  ‘What’s wrong, pet?’ Maggie asked, cuddling the girl to her.

  ‘It’s that man,’ the girl sobbed.

  ‘Which man, Sally?’

  ‘There’s a strange man coming - I’ve seen his picture and Mam says he’s going to live with us in the same house and I’ve got to sit on his knee and give him a kiss!’ The child howled once more.

  Maggie rocked her comfortingly in the raw November air and kissed her cold cheek. ‘Don’t be frightened, hinny,’ she crooned. ‘It’s your da, not a strange man. You’ll soon get to love him.’

  ‘No I won’t!’ cried the girl.

  Maggie felt unexpectedly distressed by the girl’s fear. Was this how Christabel would have felt about George returning to them? She forced herself to smile at the confused girl.

  ‘Bet he’ll bring you summat back from France.’

  Sally stopped sniffing. ‘Do you think so?’ she asked, suddenly interested.

  ‘Aye,’ Maggie nodded.

  ‘But I’ve got nothing for him,’ Sally worried.

  ‘Yes you have, bonny lass,’ Maggie assured her. ‘You’ve got yourself and your mam and that’s all he’ll be wanting.’ Suddenly she was overwhelmed by everyone else’s joy and laughter and felt an unbearable stab of loss.

  John saw at once that Maggie was distressed and swiftly handed Sally over to Millie, steering Maggie indoors. He pulled her into the dining room at the back of the house, away from the excited noise of the party. He tried to hold her close but she struggled to be free of him.

  ‘Why me?’ she raged, tears streaming down her face. ‘What have I done to your God to be suffering like this? Will I never be able to stop thinking of George and Christabel and what should have been?’

  John stood stern-faced but hung on to her hands. ‘You have to give it time,’ he told her.

  ‘Time?’ she spat.

  ‘Yes, time!’ he answered. ‘You’re not the only one in this world to suffer, you know. I know what it’s like to lose those closest to me too. Don’t you ever think how I’ve suffered?’ he shouted.

  Maggie was taken aback by his anger. It was true; she often forgot how his first wife and baby had died, for he never mentioned them. But her own personal agony was too all-consuming to be able to think of his.

  ‘But I’m in so much pain!’ Maggie rasped. ‘Why do we have to suffer? What’s the point of it all? All this death and misery? Why?’

  John was shaken to the core by her hurt and lack of belief. It was like watching her drowning before his very eyes and he fought to throw her a lifeline, knowing if he said the wrong thing now he would lose her for ever.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered in a low, intense voice, his grip digging into Maggie’s bony hands. ‘All I know is that there must be a purpose to pain - you have to make it matter!’

  She looked at him in bewilderment.

  ‘You have a choice, Maggie,’ he spoke urgently. ‘To give in to the pain and give up on life, or to use your pain to learn from it and become a fuller person. There are some people - like the Pearsons perhaps - who sail through life undisturbed, never being challenged li
ke you have, never exposed to real suffering. But such people are inward-looking, cocooned in their cosy lives, content to drift through life, never having the chance to change. They are the ones to be pitied, Maggie, for at the end of their comfortable, empty lives, what do they have to show for it?’

  Maggie searched his lean face, trying to comprehend whether this stern man before her held the answer to her doubts and despair. She saw a face lined with experience and suffering, yet the brown eyes shone with compassion and love. While she sank deeper into the depths of her unhappiness, she was aware that John Heslop might be the only person who could pull her back out of the blackness.

  She reached out and held on to him, not knowing if she loved him or not, only aware that he seemed to be offering a dim light in the darkness, with his caring eyes and his strange words about suffering.

  They clung to each other and Maggie sobbed out her heart as the wintry light faded from beyond the velvet curtains and the sound of a brass band thumped the chilly air in the street outside.

  ***

  It was John’s idea to take Maggie to London for a holiday.

  ‘Treat ourselves to a proper honeymoon,’ he joked shyly. ‘Daniel can manage the shop. Like you said, I should be giving the lad more responsibility.’

  ‘We’ll be there for polling day,’ Maggie said with a stirring of interest. ‘I’d like to see all those women turning up to vote for the first time.’

  John laughed, pleased to see his wife taking an interest in the outside world after the past bleak fortnight when she had refused to leave the house. Lloyd George had called an election now the war was over and a bill had been rushed through the Commons allowing women to stand as parliamentary candidates.

  ‘We could go and hear Miss Christabel Pankhurst speak, or Mrs Despard, or Mrs Pethick-Lawrence. They’re all contesting seats, according to the papers.’

  ‘Yes,’ Maggie’s eyes lit with enthusiasm, ‘that would be grand!’

  In early December, they stayed at a boarding house run by Methodists and spent the days exploring London’s famous sights. Maggie dragged John along to countless political meetings to listen to former suffragettes speaking from the hustings. Now they represented different parties and concerns, but Maggie experienced again the thrill of the public meeting with its lively speeches, its hecklers and jostling crowds. London seemed full of servicemen in uniform waiting impatiently to be demobbed.

  It had been so long since she had felt any fervour for politics and protest that she was quite taken by surprise by the enthusiasm which gripped her now. It lit inside her like a small fire, fanning quickly as she listened to speaker after speaker.

  ‘It’s so grand to see these women in the flesh after all this time,’ Maggie enthused, ‘really see them - and hear their voices!’

  ‘That could be you, Maggie,’ John said, slipping his arm through hers as they left an open-air platform of vying politicians.

  Maggie laughed. ‘Who would come and listen to me?’ she scoffed.

  ‘I remember a young woman who used to stand on street corners accosting decent folk with suffragette newspapers every Saturday afternoon before the war,’ he teased. ‘Plenty folk listened to you then.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Maggie asked in astonishment.

  ‘I was sometimes one of them,’ John confessed with a bashful smile.

  Maggie laughed, then added reflectively, ‘That was different, I had a prize to fight for then. And I was that impatient for change.’

  ‘There’re plenty more prizes out there,’ John insisted, ‘and plenty that needs changing.’

  She stopped and smiled up at him. ‘John Heslop, you’re growing more radical the older you get!’ she laughed.

  He squeezed her arm. ‘It’s having a wife of twenty-six that does it. I feel I’m growing younger by the day.’

  On 14 December, Election Day, they roamed around London, watching the voters arrive at polling stations in Chelsea and Battersea, Richmond and Chiswick where women candidates were standing. Maggie, wearing her frayed suffragette sash, stood and clapped the women voters as they marched proudly into the polling booths. There were no scenes or demonstrations, just a proud exercising of their right to vote. Their quiet dignity caught at Maggie’s throat.

  By mid-afternoon it was almost dark and Maggie noticed that John was chilled through.

  ‘I’m sorry, we’ve been out too long. Let’s go to a tearoom to warm up,’ she suggested. ‘I’ve seen enough.’

  They entered the first cafe that they came to, its windows steamed up and its door decorated with festive holly. As they were ushered to a table by a waitress, Maggie glanced across the room and her heart stopped.

  ‘Look, John,’ she gasped. ‘It’s Miss Alice!’

  Alice Pearson looked up at the same moment and at first did not recognise the neatly dressed, pale-faced woman staring at her. It was John Heslop that she placed and then she realised who his companion was.

  Maggie saw the look of discomfort on the older woman’s face but knew that she could not ignore them. Maggie approached her table and held out a hand.

  ‘Miss Pearson,’ Maggie said stiffly, ‘this is a great day for us women, don’t you agree?’

  Alice hesitated, thankful that she had slipped into the cafe on her own and did not have to explain her relationship with this lower-class woman to anyone. The cafe was only a minute’s walk from her Chelsea studio and she often came in for afternoon tea.

  Then Alice fought with her prejudice, instilled over countless years, telling herself that she no longer acknowledged such differences. She took Maggie’s proffered hand.

  ‘Maggie, Mr Heslop - this is a surprise. How are you both? Please, will you join me?’ she said as graciously as her conflicting emotions would allow.

  Here was the girl who had caused her family so much strife and made her so angry, Alice thought, suddenly disturbing her contented world again. For she was contented, living in London and advancing her career as a photographer. She had had a successful war, Alice thought wryly, for it had given her the opportunity to break out of the stifling provinciality of her home life and travel into the dangers of the Western Front, capturing the war on film. It had changed her from a self-opinionated snob, she admitted candidly to herself, to someone who thought more deeply about the world - more highly of the common people whose bravery she had witnessed time and time again.

  But Alice was forced to admit that if it had not been for Maggie Beaton she would have experienced none of it. She had been furious at the desecration of her beloved Hebron House, and after the arson attack she had never felt the same about her home, as if it were somehow sullied. Looking back, she wondered why. After all, it was only a summerhouse, a symbol - as Maggie’s arson had pointed out - of the stranglehold of privilege that her father and brother exercised over her and other women.

  Disenchanted by Herbert’s new regime there, Alice had taken her camera and set off aimlessly for London in 1916. A chance meeting with a Fleet Street editor had sent her off to France and from there to the trenches in Flanders.

  Looking at Maggie now, Alice faced up to the truth, that this stormy, unrefined young woman with the passionate eyes and voice, who came from the obscurity of Newcastle’s slums, had given her the courage to cast aside her security and plunge into the unknown. She had told herself that if a working-class girl like Maggie Beaton could risk everything, then so could she.

  Often, in France, Alice had thought of Maggie in prison and wondered what had become of the tragic, tempestuous girl. She had been plagued by guilt that she had turned her back on Maggie and the Movement when they needed her support most, merely to advance the interests of her own family, a family with whom contact was increasingly rare. Now she was about to find out.

  Maggie gave her a cautious look, surprised by the woman’s civility, then sat down. For a few minutes they talked about the election and the end of the war and Alice told them about her studio and her war photography. Tea came. John t
old her proudly about his marriage to Maggie in the late summer and his continuing work at the mission. Alice managed to hide her surprise that such an unlikely pair had ended up as husband and wife but was struck by how at ease they were in each other’s company, so unlike the petty warring between her brother Herbert and her unhappy sister-in-law Felicity.

  Suddenly Maggie leaned across the table and blurted out, ‘I need your help, Miss Alice.’

  ‘Maggie,’ John tried to stop her. ‘You mustn’t—’

  ‘Please, John,’ Maggie pleaded. ‘This might be my only chance of seeing Christabel.’

  Alice looked at them in confusion. ‘I’ll help if I can. But who is Christabel?’

  ‘She’s my daughter,’ Maggie told her bluntly, her grey eyes fiercely proud, ‘my illegitimate daughter.’

  Alice was flabbergasted. She just sat and stared, not knowing what to say. Yet she was less scandalised than she would have been five years ago. The old Alice would have recoiled in disgust and seen Maggie’s behaviour as confirmation of the lower classes’ loose morals. But the war had opened her eyes to many things, not least the fact that ordinary people’s lives had been thrown into turmoil by separation, fear of death and the struggle for survival. She knew nothing of the reasons for Maggie’s predicament and would not condemn her as she once would have done.

  John intervened. ‘Maggie’s child was taken into a children’s home endowed by your family - Hebron Children’s Home.’

  Alice nodded. ‘I know it. I was on the interview board for the appointment of the housemother in nineteen fifteen. It was the last task I did before leaving the north, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘We went there to find Christabel last month,’ John continued, ‘but she’d already been adopted.’

  ‘So how can I help?’ Alice asked, baffled.

  ‘We think Herbert Pearson adopted her,’ Maggie replied. ‘It is true your brother has a young daughter of about two, isn’t it?’

  Alice gawped at her. ‘Yes, Georgina, but...’

  That would explain all the secrecy surrounding her niece, Georgina, she suddenly thought. Herbert and Felicity were trying to pass the girl off as their own, Felicity having kept a reclusive life at Oxford Hall since Zeppelins had flown up the Tyne and made Hebron House too risky to live in. But Alice had been almost certain that the girl had been adopted in an attempt to present her brother as an upright family man. Herbert had once told her in a fit of self-pity that Felicity had not allowed him into her bed for years. Was it possible, Alice wondered, that the wilful Georgina who appeared to be ignored by her parents as much as Henry was could really be Maggie’s daughter? Was she their attempt to stitch together a marriage that was coming apart at the seams?