Park Lane

by Frances Osborne

  Bea pulls herself up, whispers ‘Thank you’, then ‘Good morning’, and quicksteps along the passageway and into the mauve room, where she drops into an empty seat in front of a typewriter with a feeling of relief. There is something rather reassuring about being told how to go against the grain instead of having to think it up for yourself at every turn.

  The relief does not last long. Advertisements; Bea is staring at her hell on paper. For a start, she has to decipher some handwritten scrawl, and then even these personal requests have rows of capitals that appear in the middle of sentences, and after yesterday’s exertions she needs two fingers to hold down the shift key. Even then she’s pushing down hard to keep it in place. She needs to build up the strength in, of all things, her fingers, and finds some respite from the morning in imagining binding miniature Indian exercise clubs to each digit.

  It is eleven o’clock. Bea is longing for a cup of tea, but is not up to ferrying back the inevitable half-dozen. She’s parched, though, and starts to count the number of tea-drinkers in the room, but as she does so her typewriter darkens and there’s somebody leaning over her. Bea feels the warmth of another face, and then a whisper blowing into her ear.

  ‘Come with me.’ It is Celeste.

  Bea, hoping this will involve a detour via the kitchen, follows Celeste, who walks down the passageway towards the end but stops short of the kitchen. She can see the kettles boiling through the door ahead and considers stepping past her aunt. Celeste, however, is turning towards the closed door on their right. Without pausing to knock, she opens it and walks straight in, beckoning Bea to follow.

  Bea finds herself in a floral-papered bedroom, at most twelve foot square, still containing a pair of twin beds. In front of the window is a small table with a chair behind, occupied by a woman of around fifty years old. Her greying hair has been set around her face, her white silk blouse fastened by a large pearl brooch. Celeste steers Bea ahead.

  ‘A new recruit. My niece, Beatrice Masters. Tight lips. I’ll vouch for her.’

  The woman nods and Celeste moves back towards a space on one of the beds. There are perhaps a dozen women in here, their faces a disturbing mix of the radiantly healthy and others just twigs of women, some not more than thirty yet their faces already sagging skin and bone. If a window were opened, thinks Bea, it would blow them away. Their heads, however, are held high, the heads held highest of all sporting purple cheekbones and jaws.

  ‘From the force-feeding,’ Celeste whispers as Bea sits down where her aunt pats the counterpane.

  Bea is at the pillow end of a bed and she peers forward through the trees of necks topped by waves of pinned hair: some are emaciated, others thick trunks of flesh.

  ‘Bodyguard,’ Celeste breathes into her ear.

  To the left of the woman behind the table, just to the side of the window, is an incongruously red velvet tasselled wing chair. In it sits another small woman with high cheekbones and a square jaw. Her hair is greying, too, and she looks about the same age as the woman sitting behind the table. Bea thinks back to the evening in Campden Hill Square. She can remember the hat, of course, the straight shoulders, and a flash of jawline. However, the dark and distance had kept the detail of the face from her. Now she can see that it is thinner than it should be. The skin is tired, there are the traces of dark circles under the eyes, but the eyes themselves glow as they survey this small crowd jostling for space, each woman leaning forward towards her. Of course, Bea has seen the photograph more times than she can remember, but here, glimmering in the flesh, almost close enough for Bea to reach out and touch her skin, is Emmeline Pankhurst.

  It is not Mrs Pankhurst who speaks first, but a younger woman, aged around thirty, who emerges from a corner.

  ‘I should start by thanking Mrs Hall for lending us her flat. Thank you, Pattie. I hope we are all aware that this arrangement will only work for as long as it is kept secret. Nobody needs reminding of what happened at Lincoln’s Inn House.’

  The woman’s cheeks are rounded with a healthy blush etched years ago on school hockey fields. School, thinks Bea, was not a place she was allowed to go. Had she gone, would she, like this woman, be able to stand up and address such a crowd without flinching? The woman is continuing, ‘… a special welcome to Mary Fuller and Sarah Hodson, our comrades-in-arms, and “mice” most recently released from Holloway. Not only are they recovering but they are still managing to evade rearrest.’

  One of the women with a bruised face whispers back: ‘Still in fine fettle. Only our first time …’

  Another voice, a familiar voice that makes Bea catch her breath, cuts in, ‘What your bodies feel is irrelevant. Your spirits can always stay strong.’

  It is Mrs Pankhurst, Emmeline, speaking out from her wing chair. She doesn’t wait for a formal introduction, for determination and impatience are pushing against the walls of this room and there are other things that need to be done. While women are sitting here typewriters are empty, piles of envelopes untouched and suffragettes being force-fed.

  ‘The government thinks it can ignore us,’ she continues. ‘We need to do something that it cannot forget.’

  ‘Fire …’ Bea can’t see who the voice is from, but it is not such a strong voice, perhaps from one of the women weakened by a stay in Holloway.

  Mrs Pankhurst does not wait. ‘Another burning church won’t do it. Those that need to have their minds changed must feel the heat a little closer to home.’

  ‘Home?’ Another voice, this one stronger.

  ‘Women are laying down their lives. They need to be honoured. Nothing, nobody, is beyond bounds while we are not allowed a voice in this country. This is the only way to speak left open to us.’

  As the words come out of Mrs Pankhurst’s mouth, Bea looks round the room at the women with their straight backs and perfect hair, and bruises.

  ‘Who then?’ Another voice.

  ‘It is the moment, not the person, that matters most. When that comes, the “who” will be clear.’ Emmeline Pankhurst’s voice croaks, and she is silent.

  The hearty chairwoman takes over.

  ‘Don’t worry, ladies, Mrs Pankhurst simply has a slight chill. We all agree, I am sure, on the need for extreme action. I particularly agree that timing and planning are of the essence. In the meantime we need to continue with ordinary business. Any volunteers for handing out leaflets and chalking up pavements?’

  ‘Remember,’ says Mrs Pankhurst, ‘even that has danger attached.’

  What easy price danger, thinks Bea.

  After two hours at Speakers’ Corner, Bea is straining to remember what it was like not to be cold. She didn’t feel the temperature at first, she was looking around, left, right and back again, as she had been told to. Not for the police; Bea isn’t doing anything illegal. It was, and is, for the anti-suffragists that she’s been told to watch out, especially the men, burly men, though even the small ones can be vicious. The women don’t come right up to your face, they said in Lauderdale Mansions.

  Bea feels flushed, and her breastbone is tingling. She’s enjoying the sensation, and almost wishes for a small mob of aggressors. Around her are the usual half-dozen soapbox speakers competing for attention. Religion, of course, the Salvation Army positioning itself the other side of the open area from the exhortations of the Evangelists. A Theosophist is reasoning calmly in between the Socialist Party of Great Britain demanding revolution and the anti-Home Rule propagandists arguing for no change at all in Ireland. No anti-suffragists this afternoon. Not even any of Mother’s crowd. Thank God.

  Bea’s gloves are not thick enough to keep her fingers warm yet she cannot commit the cardinal sin of slipping them into the pockets on her coat, for her hands are still clutching the last few leaflets. Reticence, she has discovered, is not the key. Nor is announcing what the leaflet says before she hands it out, though her purple, green and white sash gives it away. Instead she has learnt the tactic of approaching a passer-by and smiling as she thrusts the paper i
nto his or her hand. It makes the men, of course, more likely to take it, though they are hardly likely to read it. Still, it must be better to push out as many as possible, even if these men’s sons simply make paper aeroplanes with them. In any case, Bea has to keep up with the battleaxe who came with her.

  From here Bea can see home, just. With her binoculars trained spot on, Mother could possibly see her. Yet, instead of being frightened, after last night Bea feels a calm certainty that Mother would not actually throw Bea out of the house, leaving herself yet more alone.

  Even if she did, Edie would take Bea in. Well, perhaps – newly-weds can be so conventional. Of course, on the outside it’s all fun and games but challenge them a little and they are nervous of change. Or there’s Celeste. But Celeste has other house guests. A perpetually rotating list of ‘distressed’ women and ‘artistic’ men. According to Celeste, the most reliable among them are the just-released hunger-strikers, of whom there are usually at least two languishing upstairs. She once picked up a woman off the streets whom she installed in the best spare and who charmed the other guests for a fortnight while yelping at any staff who tried to touch her possessions. After two weeks of complaining that ‘those lot will have it all off me given half the chance’, she vanished with two silver sugar shakers and a teapot.

  ‘Funny,’ said Celeste when she told the story to Bea. ‘She didn’t drink tea.’

  This will not happen, however. People talk and Mother doesn’t, she surely doesn’t, want a scandal; she has enough to irritate her already and any more might weaken her standing with the Union. She cares about that more than anything, well, apart from Edward. Until Edward marries, Mother is the most important woman in his life. Even when he does marry, it is not a position, Bea suspects, that Mother will readily surrender.

  It is five thirty before Bea has handed out the last of the leaflets. It’s almost dark. The lamps are on and the park suddenly feels quite empty. She has to be at dinner by seven in order to make the theatre. It will take her more than a quarter of an hour to walk home – which of course she should not be doing after dark. Not the walk, nor the alone, nor the park. Bea smiles to herself as she sets off down the avenue of trees leading south.

  It’s funny how, after dark, even if there is still traffic, you can hear footsteps ring, especially the ones behind her right now. They come closer, making Bea feel a little uncomfortable, and she speeds up, but not as fast as they do, for a pair of silhouettes and pale faces pass on her right. She relaxes a little but moves to the centre of the path, as far as she can from the shadows of tree trunks. As she approaches the bottom of the avenue the path ahead empties of approaching figures and behind her she hears a steady knock keeping pace, a heavy one, too. She walks a little more briskly, but the steps copy hers. She glances to the left. Through the bars of the trees she sees her home, but there is a spiked wall of railings and a road in between. Fast now, Beatrice, but don’t run, it would be far too impolite. Not to mention inelegant; she has never been a good runner.

  Fifty yards to go. If the man behind her – and surely it is a man – is going to rob her, or ‘even worse’, as Clemmie used to whisper when Bea crawled into her bed at night, then he will grab her now. But, just in time, thank God, Bea can see someone turning into the park ahead of her, walking in her direction. Bea could run to this figure but just cannot bring herself to, and so she walks steadily and quickly ahead. As the bowler hat and ruddy face of the figure loom into view, she turns towards him and beams a smile. But the man does not smile back. Instead, he leans forward and hisses. Bea can feel the heat of his breath.

  ‘Only a woman.’

  It’s not much, but Bea feels as though she has been slapped and her legs lose their direction. She wants to go forward but she finds herself slowing down right by this hissing, spitting person. Flecks of the half-rotten-meat smell from his mouth are landing, she is sure, on her face. As she stops she feels a heavy hand reach out from behind her and take her arm.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  It is a strong south London accent, one that, in the circumstances, does not make Bea relax. That’s it, she’s surrounded. The stranger behind her will ask her to hand her money over, quite rightly assuming that she must have some tucked in somewhere. Or worse, he could take her for the sort of woman who walks here alone. But that is not what he says at all. Instead he turns to the hisser, who has also stopped, and says, ‘Would you mind leaving this young lady in peace.’

  Bea tries to look the hisser in the eye imploringly. Don’t go, she is trying to say, you may be rude, but you aren’t about to rob me. It is, of course, too dark for him to see anything but the rim of her hat.

  ‘She should be home,’ splutters the hisser, ‘asking her husband what he thinks.’

  And he walks off, leaving Bea with this stranger behind her whom she can’t yet see.

  ‘Do you often walk alone through the park after dark?’

  Bea gasps. He does think she is one of those women. How on earth is this happening to her? All she has done is hand out a few leaflets. Bea waits, dreading what he will say next, but he is telling her that she is still wearing her sash, perhaps asking for trouble. He’s been trying to catch up with her for a while, but she’s a galloper. Where is she going? Can she at least let him walk her out of the park?

  Can she? Can she not? If she continues alone she may be accosted again, and she would rather have her belongings removed charmingly than roughly – if, if anything else, then she will run, properly this time. Bea slips her sash over her head, folds it and tucks it under her elbow. It can go under her coat before she reaches the house. Beside this stranger, she walks out of the park. This is, she thinks, becoming a habit and one which, though a little terrifying at stages, breaks at least half a dozen of the most serious rules she has been brought up with – satisfactorily so.

  10

  FOR THREE NIGHTS, SINCE MONDAY, THE LIBRARY BOOK under Grace’s mattress has been burning a hole in her cheek. Each time she turns at night she fancies she can feel an edge, reminding her that she’s not just having a bad dream. It’s like one of those stories she reads in the newspaper – the maid who did the terrible thing, employers betrayed and hurt after such kindness … Maid’s family shamed … She thinks of her ma and da and the little ones with no money from her, and no chance of working again, let alone in an office. Even Michael, he’d hardly be able to keep his career in the law with a sister locked up, and she was only trying to help him. You half-wit, Grace. Still, how’s he to keep his career in the law with what he’s up to? Grace is no fool. She knows what The Condition of the Working Class in England is about, and Karl Marx is one of the books he’d wanted with it – though she’s not getting him that. She only has to glance at the newspaper to see that the ‘Marxists’ would destroy the lot of us if they could. Engels may sounds like the word ‘angels’ in comparison, but look at the subject matter for all that. It occurs to Grace that if she were caught with this book, the politics would be seen as much of a wrong as the thieving.

  She could put it back, but when would she do that? She can hardly carry it down with the excuse that she’d found it somewhere and was returning it to the library. It’s at that point, being in the library, putting it back, when she’s most likely to be caught. No, she has to get it out of the house, and to Michael now. Whenever she’s in her room she fancies she hears Mrs Wainwright’s heels clip along the passage. Grace watches the door handle, waiting for it to turn. Even about the house she’s waiting for a hand on her shoulder. What’s the matter with you, asks Mary as they dress?

  It’s the china this morning, and with Joseph, too. Now they’re up in the dining room together she should be smiling, shouldn’t she? But she’s looking away because she doesn’t want him to see the wickedness written in her eyes, and because she’s not looking and can’t keep still, she walks into him and she jumps. He’s in his shirtsleeves, cleaning the china; just a shirt it is between him and her, though she’s her morning frock on, but that�
��s thin cotton too. She clutches the plate she is holding close to her, and she hopes, to dear God, that Joseph hasn’t dropped his dish. There’s no shattering though, just his voice and she can’t help but turn to it.

  ‘Grace,’ he says. Just Grace, but it’s a hundred words for all its softness and pull and she purses her lips tight to stop them trembling. He looks at her, puzzled at her face, and so she turns away again.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘No, Joseph, no.’

  Before he can reply, she has a stack of plates and is taking them downstairs for warming. She doesn’t look back.

  The family is out for luncheon and, after their own dinner, they’ll have a break until four. Grace asks to be excused. Excused? says Mrs Wainwright. There’ll be no food later. Today that’s the last thing Grace is worried about, and at noon she hurries up the stairs to change into her black afternoon dress and white pinny so as to look right when she comes back in. She’s not hungry, and wonders whether it’s as much that she won’t be sitting opposite Joseph at dinner as the book. When she buttons up her coat, it’s awful tight, not much room for a book underneath. It’ll have to be her tapestry handbag. Big enough it is too. Let’s hope Mrs Wainwright won’t go through it as Grace leaves. No thoughts like that, Grace Campbell, or your face’ll be as guilty as the sin this is.

  She moves quickly now, knocks back down the stairs but not too fast, nor too slow; she needs to catch Michael in the ten minutes she knows he’s sent out to fetch soup and a slice. A pie for a treat, thought that’s not often enough, not with those thin cheeks.

  Up Park Lane she goes, fourpence in her pocket. She’s to go five stops east from Marble Arch on the Tuppenny Tube, and it’s the size of this city that scares her. It goes on and on east with no stopping.

  The air even here, by the park, makes you cough. What with the motors and buses rattling enough to fill her ears and all their smoke, it’s a wonder anybody can breathe at all. Not that the air was that clean in Carlisle. But it wasn’t like this. It’s worse the faster she walks, and she needs to be quick to catch him. She’s not sure which ten minutes he’ll have, varies every day, he says. The sooner she’s there, waiting outside, the better. She checks off the mansions one by one as she walks along. She doesn’t know them well yet. When she’s out on a Sunday she’s either rushing to church, or rushing back from seeing Michael. And she’s hardly going to suggest to him that they take a look along the road. He has her address but she doesn’t want him poking around, does she? Besides, he’s told her he can’t stand the people who live in places like these. Except me, she tells herself.