11
BEA IS ON HER WAY TO GLEBE PLACE IN CHELSEA AT half past three on a Saturday afternoon, in a taxi with a cough in its engine. The rally was announced this morning. It had been kept so quiet that she hadn’t heard even a word of it in Lauderdale Mansions until she went in today, and by then it was already in the papers. The police, she was told quite directly, must have as little notice as possible as to where Emmeline might be. There are rearrest warrants out for her from one end of the country to the other, and she has to get into the house she is speaking from before they know where to look: they’ve no right to go in there. Still, Bea thought, am I so little trusted that I couldn’t know?
Never mind, she’s on her way and her pulse is quickening. She should not be as excited as this; she wasn’t this jumpy when Celeste led her into Emmeline’s room. Calm down, Beatrice, you’re no longer a giddy debutante waiting for her first dance. You’ve been to one of these meetings before. So what’s the bother about this one? She’s just going, isn’t she, because it would be pretty poor not to show.
Now she’s standing in a wide street in Chelsea, one side low dark red-brick artists’ studios, the other a neat white terrace. She’s found a position bang opposite from where Mrs Pankhurst will emerge, and she’s edged back up the steps to the front door of the house behind her to gain a little height, although it’s not Mrs Pankhurst she’s looking for but a familiar face from Lauderdale Mansions. The team, almost to a woman, is somewhere in front of her, yet how on earth is Bea to spot them? All she can see from here are backs of heads and so many banners she hasn’t a chance of finding a soul. Blast, she should have asked where they were meeting up before they arrived. It’s mid-afternoon, when there’s no need even to pretend to have a chaperone, but for the first time Bea quite wishes she had somebody with her.
The crowd thickens and begins to heave. Bea remembers the chaos of Campden Hill Square and feels slightly nauseous at the thought. Backwards into this front door may be the only direction she can go until she is impaled upon the serpent doorknob digging into her.
The police are already several men deep around the house, and a few mounted. From her position on the steps, Bea can see over the helmets in front of her: there’ll be plain-clothes in here too. Maybe this time a real one will arrest her. Her mind fills with the potential consequences. Who would she send for to pay her bail – if she was given it? Celeste first, though she is at a house party for a few days. Then Edie, if necessary. Edward’s pockets are more likely to be empty than laden.
The crowd waits. Two more people, a man and a woman, are climbing on to the top step with Bea. She sticks firmly to her position in the centre, and finds herself wedged between them. At least, she thinks, this is warmer. Whispers hiss through the crowd in waves. Mrs Pankhurst is coming, she’s about to come, she’s been caught, that’s why she’s late, I hope there’s an exit out the back this time. And they wait. Part of the drama, thinks Bea, and clever, for the people down here need to believe in Mrs Pankhurst. As Bea does … does she? She is mesmerised by Mrs Pankhurst – more so rather than less by having been within touching distance – and her breath is shortening as she waits to hear her speak again. But chaining herself to railings, throwing a brick? You don’t have to believe in that to believe in Mrs Pankhurst, do you? As the crowd’s rumble drops into silence, Bea holds her breath. The first-floor window across the street begins to open and she watches.
She jumps, almost yelps, as she feels a hand on her forearm, but catches the noise. Then slowly, not quite wanting to see, she looks down. It is the man from Campden Hill Square, as dark-faced, bowler-hatted and mackintoshed as before. Bea should want to shrink back, even if there is nowhere to shrink to, but she doesn’t. My God, she can’t be pleased to see him, can she, a man who has been so downright objectionable?
He nods up at her.
She nods back down at him and brusquely turns back to the balcony. A woman wearing a black hat with a large feather in it is standing out there alone. In the two seconds’ silence that follows, Bea wonders whether she will have to speak to the man and what on earth she will say. But thank God, Mrs Pankhurst begins.
Mrs Pankhurst is less dramatic this time. Instead of urging people to lay down their lives, she declares that suffragettes will live. That those being released from prison as they are about to die, and being recaptured and force-fed again, will survive. However patient and long-suffering women may be, she declares, once they are set on a course they are ‘more dangerous than any other opponent of the government’, and nothing short of the vote will satisfy them. Nor will they rest until the ‘horrible poison’ of inequality that is dripped into little children is stemmed, and men and women are equal in the eyes of the law. Until then, why should women obey the law if they have no part in making it? And, so long as the juries judging women do not include women, they ‘refuse to be punished’.
One of the reasons she was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude, she continues, was because in court she spoke up for the women who behave ‘through poverty as some men behave in pursuit of what they call pleasure’. A certain judge due to pronounce on such women, she had said, failed to appear in court that morning. The night before he ‘had been found dead in a house of ill fame’.
The crowd roars with laughter. Bea laughs with it.
One name crops up again and again in her speech. Mr McKenna, the Home Secretary; Mr McKenna, who decides how the law will be applied; Mr McKenna, who decides that women will be imprisoned while political rebels in Ireland are not; Mr McKenna, who decides which women will be forcibly fed, twelve men and women holding each single prisoner down.
As Mrs Pankhurst disappears, the crowd surges. Within seconds it is a maelstrom. In the motion of hats, shoulders and umbrellas up and down, sideways and forwards, some are pushed backwards towards her, points in the air. That’s it, thinks Bea, if it’s not the doorknob, it’s an umbrella; the headline will read ‘GIRL IMPALED’. At least it will not be ‘GIRL IMPALED WITH STRANGER’ for that man has vanished again. The crowd pushes harder. Bea can feel the doorknob digging into her back. She shuffles to one side and is now against the door, in reach of the bell. She pushes it. But she’s been standing outside for the past hour and there hasn’t been a single light on. The crowd pushes harder and Bea is now frightened to the extent that the man she never wanted to see again is now the person she most wants to see in the world. Then a hand takes hers. She can’t see the arm it is attached to, but it is a familiar hold. The man from Campden Hill Square squeezes through an invisible gap to stand next to her and puts his arm around her waist. Her waist! Just don’t think about it, Bea, you need to escape this crowd.
He can make gaps appear, this man. He eases her through a press of bodies so tight she must be losing buttons all over the place. She lets her umbrella trail behind her for a moment until it becomes wedged and is pulled away from her.
They reach a right angle in the road, where it dog-legs down towards the river, before they have room to breathe again. He lets go of her waist and breaks into a quick pace, his footsteps echoing between the walls of red-brick houses on either side. The winter light is fading, and the street lamps cast a pale glow through which he is racing, his mackintosh, for some reason undone, flapping behind him.
Bea struggles to keep up. He’s not stopping and waiting for her either, just striding on as if he were alone. This goads Bea on: she’s damn well not going to be left behind. But by the time they reach the river the man is a couple of dozen yards ahead of her and Bea has had enough. To hell with him, she thinks, if he reckons I am going to run after him, and she simply stops dead by a lamp-post at the corner. A taxi will, she thinks, at some point appear. And good riddance, she whispers to herself; hadn’t she wanted to give him the slip?
Beyond the road stretches the width of the Thames, its grey-greenness glistening in the light of the lamps along its edge. Almost makes the Thames look promising, thinks Bea, I must certainly be feeling pleased to think that.
And then, again, a hand is upon her arm.
This is insufferable, she thinks. Is he coming or going, and if he can’t make up his mind then she’ll do it for him.
‘The wind,’ he says, ‘will pick you up if you wait there any longer.’ Bea doesn’t reply; she hasn’t noticed the breeze, and a stiff one at that, but as the man points it out she feels the chill on her face.
‘This way,’ he says. He must be joking, but there’s something about ‘this way’ that makes her wonder where he is taking her. In any case, he’s heading east, which is more or less the right direction for her home. Bea, only out of curiosity, she tells herself, follows. Just for a little longer. I’ll take a taxi the moment I feel like it.
The man leads her across the road and they walk along beside the water. Bea fancies she can hear it lapping against the stone walls of its sides. He walks slower now, at her pace. So there is an iota of manners in him, she thinks, but as he opens his mouth it occurs to her that he simply wants to question her.
‘So, what are you doing here?’ The accent burrs through his speech and the question comes gruffly, as though he begrudges having to speak at all.
‘What do you mean?’ She still puffs a little, for they are, to be frank, walking as briskly as she can manage.
‘Dressed like that I can’t see you chained to a railing.’
Bea stops. For God’s sake, the man really can’t open his mouth and be anything but impolite, and downright provocatively so. How does he know that she wouldn’t chain herself to a railing? Why, half of her would jolly well like to show him that she could. If she were to go back into the crowd it couldn’t take long to find someone with a spare lock. But instead of telling him this, she lifts her chin and asks, ‘So, what are you doing here?’
‘Trying to change things.’
‘What things?’ She turns her head, as though she couldn’t be less interested.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Well, no, it isn’t.’ Of course it isn’t. The people listening to Mrs Pankhurst want to change everything from the trade unions to religion.
‘Not that you’d know.’
How dare he? And just when she thought that he was capable, in some way, of behaving like a gentleman.
‘You are markedly uncivil, Mr … Mr?’
‘Campbell.’
‘Mr Campbell, you are speaking as though I have no idea of life outside of my own.’
‘Do you?’
‘I most certainly do.’
Mr Campbell does not reply, and Bea starts to doubt her own answer. Does she really have an idea, she wonders? What lives is she aware of besides her own and those of her friends, and the servants’ – even then, has she any idea what it feels like to be them? With this she falls silent, too.
They are passing the Royal Hospital Gardens, its black bushes looming through the railings. Bea is walking on, chin pushed a little higher than before, when a taxi comes towards them. The words to ask Mr Campbell to hail it for her rise in her throat and she holds on to them as she watches the taxi come closer, and waits for this man to raise his arm for her. But he doesn’t. When it has passed, empty, she is surprised to find herself a little relieved.
They walk by Chelsea Bridge, then under the railway to Victoria, and Mr Campbell crosses back over the road and turns left. And it is only at this point, as she enters entirely unfamiliar territory, it occurs to Bea that at no stage has he asked her whether this is the right direction for her.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’m going home.’
‘Home?’
‘Digs in Pimlico.’
‘Is this Pimlico?’
‘Yes.’
‘And … and …?’ For one of the few times in her life, Bea is lost for words.
‘And what about you?’
She hesitates. ‘Yes.’
‘I was going to find you a cup of tea and then put you in a taxi.’
Bea finds she is very thirsty indeed.
There’s a tea room around the corner. Not a Lyons, far from it. The walls were once white and tablecloths are a grey-tinged red check. Only one other table is occupied. Bea sits at the first table she sees, by the window and close to the door. Anything this man does will therefore be visible to all and sundry. And she can be out in a flash. Anything this man does … Is she really thinking that, still?
A middle-aged woman in a white dress and frilly apron is standing beside them almost as soon as they sit down. She is carrying a pair of plates bearing a base of grey squashed by a thick layer of white.
‘Shepherd’s pie,’ says the woman. Any appetite Bea has vanishes. She glances across the table for a shared opinion but Mr Campbell’s eyes are fixed on the plates. However, he orders only tea. When he turns to Bea, she nods.
‘Two teas, then.’
The woman heads for the other table, shepherd’s pies slopping to the sides of the plates as they tilt.
‘You look hungry,’ says Bea.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Bea decides not to explain herself. Instead she starts to remove her coat, but it’s chilly in here and she turns to look at the window and, as she breathes out, a patch of steam appears on it. When she turns back, she starts. Her companion is down to his shirtsleeves. Bea has never sat with a man doing this in a public place, and he is wearing armbands above his elbow, traces of ink on his shirt. At least he uses a pen for a living.
‘Aren’t you cold?’
He laughs, or that’s what Bea wants to think it is, though it is more of a snort. He is looking at her as though he can’t believe what he sees.
‘You don’t feel the cold, where I’m from.’
Bea considers ignoring this last remark and not asking him where he is from. But that accent really is familiar, and Mr Campbell is so irritatingly lacking in detail that she wants to know. If she is to score a point, it will be by showing up his remark by asking in the politest way possible.
‘Where are you from, Mr Campbell?’
‘Carlisle.’
‘Oh.’ Two people, Bea thinks, from Carlisle.
‘On the Scottish border. West side of the country.’
‘I know where Carlisle is.’
‘Geography lessons, of course.’
‘I know someone from there. What on earth is wrong with geography lessons?’ And what, Bea wants to ask, is so wrong with me? If everything about me makes you so angry, then why have you brought me here?
‘I think our schools were a little different.’
Bea doesn’t tell him that she didn’t go to school, that school was, like university, regarded by her family and their friends as being for solicitors’ daughters. She was kept in an upstairs schoolroom, at the mercy of whichever governess was currently enduring her family. Most of them French or German. In fact, it is a miracle that she does know where Carlisle is, and it is only that she’s passed it half a dozen times on the way to shooting parties in Scotland.
Bea looks across the table at the man in front of her. He is thickset and square-jawed, eyebrows a trifle too full and dark. Not pale-skinned, either. And his nose, yes, broken, or at least bashed. She is trying not to think that she is having tea with a stranger who might have broken his nose in a brawl of some kind. She is also struggling not to admit to herself that she finds this man in any way attractive. Pushing a boundary is one thing, this would be taking an axe and hacking a hole through the dividing lines. She pulls herself upright; she expects him to be a little cowed by her, if not her looks, then her accent, dress, the obvious existence of money. But he does not give the impression of being in the slightest impressed. He is a hard man to push, this one, and, annoyed by his apparent lack of interest in her, she says, ‘Don’t you want to ask any questions about me?’
‘What would I learn that I can’t already see?’
‘You might want to ask me my position on suffrage.’
‘Your position on suffrage is that it’s all “a lark”, as opposed to some l
uncheon engagement. It’ll fill your time before you marry and immerse yourself in the causes of husband, children, dinner parties and servants.’
‘Mr Campbell, that is unimpressively unoriginal. I had expected you to do better than that.’ She had – that was straight out of some caricature in the papers. At least it can’t be what he really thinks and, yes, she has now surprised him. His eyebrows are flickering, and there’s not a trace of scorn in his face, so she continues. ‘I can see you think yourself an expert on people whom you know not at all. I, in fact, am planning a book.’
This is almost true. Well, even though that was John’s and her dream, there’s no reason she shouldn’t still do that, one day, if she can find a husband whom she can persuade to go abroad with her. Who knows, they might bump into John in some far-flung outpost and exchange cordial greetings before Bea, clearly radiantly happy, vanishes arm in arm with her husband.
‘What type of book?’
‘An account of travels.’ She tells him that these will be travels abroad, to Siberia, she hopes. And this must have made something of an impression upon him for he leans back in his chair, looks at her and reaches across the table, hand open.
‘Michael Campbell. Of Carlisle. And?’
‘Beatrice.’ And then she pauses before giving her surname but Masters is common enough and she cannot think of another to stick to so she goes on, ‘Masters.’
He raises his eyebrows.
‘Like the railwayman?’
‘Who?’ she replies.
Then she asks him what he believes in. Because, she says pointedly, one can be significantly more accurate in assumptions if one asks first.
Mr Campbell ignores the barb. Instead he leans forward and the words start pouring out of him. Inequality, poverty, injustice, turning the world on its head. The accent burrs through his speech and here and there she thinks she mishears a word but the more she listens, the fewer these words become. She doesn’t want him to stop. This burning awakes something in her. There may be little place for the life Bea lives in the world Mr Campbell longs for, but that cannot be such a bad thing. For that’s what she wants, something other than the future this Mr Campbell so dismissively mapped out for her. And isn’t that what Mrs Pankhurst would want, what the whole purpose of Lauderdale Mansions is? Bea holds herself back from reaching across the table towards him. When he at last pauses long enough for her to utter a word, she hears herself promising to help him.
Park Lane Page 14