Sally and Hannah had not been the only ones to come to their feet at that: and three days later, again at Hannah’s side, Sally had been in the crowds that had attended the first ‘Women’s Parliament’ at Caxton Hall and who, on hearing that yet again the King’s Speech made no reference to votes for women had promptly passed a resolution of their own and marched with it to the House of Commons. In the ensuing fracas Sally had not only acquitted herself with commendable – not to say, perhaps regrettably, practised – competence, but had succeeded by dint of quick thinking and a sharpish turn of speed in preventing both herself and her mentor from being taken into custody by an over-enthusiastic and beefy young constable, a favour for which Hannah had thanked her ruefully but half regretfully.
‘Strike a light!’ Sally had laughed, panting, exhilarated by the battle, gathering handsful of the hair that had slithered about her shoulders and stuffing them into her hat, ‘Next time I’ll leave you to the Rozzers!’ and then had stopped, struck to silence by the echo of her own easy insolence to a woman who was, after all, her employer’s daughter. But Hannah had laughed, unaware, and slipped an arm through hers. ‘Come on – let’s go to Brown’s for a pot of tea. We deserve it.’
‘Wasn’t Sylvia Pankhurst one of those who were arrested that day?’ Charlotte asked now, idly curious, breaking into the silence.
‘Yes, she was. Miss Hannah went to visit her.’ And had come away from the forbidding pile of Holloway, Sally remembered, more than a little subdued.
The child in the cot whimpered a little and then suddenly set up a hungry bawling that set Charlotte’s teeth on edge and strung her nerves to breaking point. Her breasts ached and her nipples were sore. She hated the sound that the baby made; thin, desperate, demanding.
‘Well, well, and what’s happening here, might I ask? Why no lights when baby’s ready for supper? Come along – Sally, isn’t it? – jump to it. Lamps, please. And hot water for baby’s bath.’ The officious Miss Brown swept into the room on a cloud of starch and carbolic. Charlotte lay back and closed her eyes, fighting panic and a stirring of physical sickness.
‘Now, Mother—’ Relentlessly brisk, Miss Brown picked up the screaming child and dumped her into Charlotte’s stiffly unwilling arms. ‘Off we go. Supper time.’
II
Sally, escaping the too-warm sickly smelling room as soon as was decently possible, fled to the sanctuary of her own small bedroom. The Pattens did not, as did so many others, work their people from dawn to dusk and sleep them in attic dormitories that were airless ovens in summer and ice-boxes in winter. Each girl’s hours were strictly and fairly laid down and each had a tiny room to herself in the huge old stable block, now the ever-expanding children’s home. Sally’s room, though hat-box small, looked down over the little walled garden where Mrs Briggs did her gallant best to nurture a few herbs and vegetables – heritage, she often said a little wistfully, of a country childhood – and it was far enough from the road to be relatively quiet. It was simply decorated with pale, stippled walls and a whitewashed ceiling, and even more simply furnished. It held a narrow bed, a wash stand, a chest of drawers and a chair, all sturdy scrubbed wood that shone with beeswax. The fireplace was minute, but the little box of coal and wood that sat beside it was well stocked at all times of the year. On one wall was an ancient, fly-specked mirror, on another a faded embroidered text, much embellished with ill-executed violets and roses. She knew the words by heart, knew every stitch of their construction. ‘Blessed Are The Pure In Heart, For They Shall See God.’ In those months that Sally had struggled to master her letters, those words, together and separately, so tantalizingly hung above her head as she lay in bed, had been a spur of the kind that could never have been imagined by their original creator, for she had refused to ask their meaning, had waited for the triumphant day when she could painstakingly spell them out for herself. Beside the bed was a small set of shelves upon which lay a battered bible – which for the present was still way beyond her reading skills – a book of Aesop’s fables lent to her by Ralph and printed in clear strong letters, and the big book of fairy tales with which Toby, to her astonishment, had presented her on the afternoon of that day nearly eight months before when they had crept back into the awakening house like thieves in reverse, hastily hiding their bundles, covering the traces of their attempted flight. ‘Mr Ralph says you can keep it,’ he had said of the book, nonchalantly.
‘Why? What would he give me something like that for?’
He had lifted a small shoulder. ‘I dunno. But ’e says we – you – can have it. Come on, Sal – open it – find the one about the three little pigs.’
It was lying open now, on the bed where she had left it, the ruler she still used to follow the words ready on the counterpane beside it. Not to anyone had she admitted how much sheer pleasure she got from this hard-won achievement of reading and writing. From the frustration of the first weeks, when Toby’s quick mind had appeared to absorb everything and anything it encountered as surely as hers had rejected it, she had moved slowly and stubbornly through the first faint glimmerings of understanding to a breakthrough that had been like the sun rising upon a night’s darkness. She would never, she suspected, read with the easy facility that Toby already seemed to have acquired – but if not swift her progress had been sure, and the words and the shades of their meaning were a joy and a delight to her. She settled now beside the small fire that had been lit against the unseasonal spring chill, a thin finger marking the words as she read, a frown of concentration on her face. She had not, however, managed more than a couple of lines when a noise by the doorway, the slight creaking of a hinge snapped her head up irritably. Not Bron again, surely? Did the girl never want to spend a moment on her own?
‘Who’s that?’
There was a small scuffling sound, a smothered giggle.
Not Bron.
Lips twitching to laughter despite herself, she laid the book down quietly and crept to the door, flinging it open to reveal two small children and a fiercely struggling bundle of black fur. The little girl shrieked as the door flew open and collapsed into helpless giggles. The boy, who was clutching the almost demented kitten apparently totally unaware both of the small animal’s struggles and of the damage the tiny, razor sharp claws were inflicting, grinned broadly. ‘We brought Fluff to see you.’
She eyed the angry animal doubtfully. ‘Did you indeed? He doesn’t seem very pleased about it.’
‘Yes ’e is. ‘Course ’e is. ’E wanted ter come.’
‘Really?’
The urchin nodded.
Sally eyed the cheeky face, trying not to laugh. ‘Any particular reason for that?’
‘I ’spec’ ’e wanted to ’ear a story,’ the child said, straight faced. His sister burst into embarrassed giggles again, hiding her face in her pinafore.
‘I see. Well – you’d best come in, hadn’t you?’
The two children scuttled into the room, stood together waiting, expectancy in their identical pale blue eyes. The kitten struggled with manic determination.
‘I think perhaps you’d better let Fluff go, don’t you?’
‘All right.’ Unceremoniously the child dropped the little cat, which landed on its feet and streaked under the bed.
‘A story, you said?’ Sally asked pensively.
Two small heads nodded in unison.
‘Any particular story?’
‘One of yours,’ the little girl said, ‘not out of a book. A twin story.’ Then, overcome at her own temerity she buried her scarlet face again in her apron.
Sally surveyed them. Two months before she had been in the room known as the nursery when Ben Patten had brought these two in, having found them scavenging, half-starved, in the hospital rubbish dump. Sullen and savagely defiant the boy had been filthy, his skin covered in sores and scabs, his small frame skeletal from undernourishment. The girl, obviously his twin, had been as bad, her long hair matted and evil smelling, eyes and nose running with mucus. The
boy had snarled like a small animal. The girl had said nothing.
‘Well, well,’ Hannah had said collectedly, ‘here’s a handful and no mistake.’
She had been right. The boy, Bertie, who now watched Sally with sharp, hopeful, healthily cheeky eyes, had bitten Ben, Ralph and Hannah and scratched Sally’s arms to ribbons as they had bathed him. For a fortnight he had spoken nothing but obscenities; his sister – Annie – had spoken not at all. Even Ralph had begun to despair of them. They had wolfed the food they were given, had refused to use the lavatories provided for the children but slunk into the yard at night, had screamed and fought like wild animals if any attempt was made to part them even for a moment. They had refused utterly to respond to a friendly overture.
Until the day that Sally, sitting with four or five of the younger children who did not yet attend school, had begun to tell a story.
It had been an uneasy movement amongst her small audience that had first alerted her: heads had turned, one or two of the youngsters had squeezed a little closer to her. Bertie and Annie had not at that time been the home’s most popular inmates. Sally had looked up. The two children were standing sullenly by the open door, neither in nor out of the room, Annie as always a step behind her brother, who stood truculently, four-square on his skinny, scabbed legs, his thin face warily hostile as eyes turned towards him. They had looked like two abandoned and savage wild creatures, and Sally’s heart had ached for them. But instinctively she had ignored them, turning back to her young audience, inviting their attention with a small, dramatic gesture.
‘—so – along comes this little lad and says, “Oi! That’s my green bean you got there—!”’
‘What was ’is name, Miss?’
Sally looked up in comical surprise. ‘What – the bean?’
The child who had interrupted squealed with laughter. ‘No! The little boy!’
‘Ah.’ Sally put a thoughtful finger to her lip. ‘I think – yes I think it was something like – Albert. No. Posher than that it was, now I stop to think about it. Bertram. That’s it. Bertram. Of course everyone called him Bertie. He’d almost forgotten his real name. He had a sister—’ she had stopped again, as if thinking. The two at the door were watching her, faces expressionless. Sally kept her eyes upon the upturned, eager faces in front of her. ‘Rose-Anne her name was. Pretty name. But everyone called her Annie, of course.’
By the time Ralph had come to join them an hour or so later the twins had been sitting some distance from the group, their backs firmly and defensively to the wall, but none the less listening intently to the improvised story of their namesakes and the rest of the children, equally enthralled by the unlikely adventures of the two Sally had dubbed the Terrible Twins were happily ignoring them. It had been the least disruptive hour the two had spent since being brought to the Bear.
‘Well done!’ With quiet warmth Ralph had put an arm about Sally’s shoulders and hugged her. ‘I truly was beginning to feel that we were never going to break through to those two.’
‘They didn’t say much.’
‘They didn’t have to. You’ll see. They’ll come round now.’
And they had. The breach once made, Sally had watched, impressed despite herself, Ben Patten’s gentle but determined conquering of the twins’ fear and hostility, Ralph’s cheerful and steady refusal to accept continued ill-behaviour. Bron – surprisingly – had mothered them, Kate – not surprisingly – would have nothing to do with them. But their steady favourite since that day had been Sally; and to her own surprise she had been pleased and touched by their fierce devotion. They laughed now with an ease she would have thought impossible a month or so ago, vying with each other with outrageous ideas for new stories. They had, she knew, been saved in the true and basic sense of the word. And in admitting that she knew that she herself was beginning to lose her distrust of the Pattens and their motives. No one could have watched the change in these two unmoved. If the home never did anything else, here was justification for the Pattens and their crusade; and she had been a part of it. Ralph and Hannah had both been openly delighted. Ben had gone out of his way to thank her for her help and even to ask her advice. ‘Can we separate them, do you think? Perhaps at least get them to do things rather more individually? If they are eventually to go to school they’ll have to get used to being apart sometimes.’
Sally had shaken her head firmly. Too well she knew the world from which these children had come. ‘No. Not yet. Not for a long time, I should think. Wait till they’re ready. They’ve no one but each other. Try to split them and you’ll lose them.’
Her advice had been taken, in this case and in others. Realizing that her knowledge and understanding of these children was grounded in a harsh experience that he himself lacked, Ralph in particular had often come to her with a difficult child, and even though her own doubts of him with regard to Toby were never far from the surface she enjoyed working with him and with the children.
‘Well now,’ she said now, the Terrible Twins extricated once more from a tricky situation and ready to do battle another day, ‘enough’s enough, I’d say. Time for supper.’
‘O-oh!’ The protest, as everything else with these two, was in perfect unison.
She clapped her hands. ‘No argument! Off you go. Or Mrs Briggs’ll have my guts for garters!’
Grinning at that, they turned as a tap sounded at the door and Hannah popped her head around it. ‘Sorry – are you busy?’
‘No. They’re just leaving. Come on, you kids – off you go—’
‘Can we come agen termorrer?’
She grinned and ruffled a bright head. ‘Only if you eat every scrap of your supper, including your cabbage, and then spend a whole hour learning your letters.’
‘An hour?’ Bertie was aghast.
‘An hour,’ Sally said repressively.
Annie grabbed her brother’s arm. ‘All right,’ she said valiantly, ‘we’ll do it. If we can come back termorrer.’
Hannah smiled as they tumbled past her. ‘What a difference in those two! I’ve still got the scars where that little devil bit me – yet look at him – you’ve got him eating out of your hand!’
Sally smiled. ‘We understand each other, him an’ me.’
‘I came to bring you this.’ Hannah dropped a dark-printed sheet of paper on to the chest-of-drawers. ‘It’s the pamphlet Sylvia was talking about the other day. You said you wanted to read it.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
Hannah turned back to the door. Stopped. Stood for a moment pushing distractedly at a cascade of loosened hairpins. ‘Sally?’
Sally looked enquiringly.
‘You – you’re sure you want to come with me tomorrow? To the meeting?’
‘Of course.’
Uncharacteristically hesitant, and still fiddling with the hairpins, Hannah said, ‘You do know – you do realize – that there could be real trouble?’
Staunchly Sally grinned. ‘Can’t be worse than a bad Saturday night down the Commercial Road.’
Hannah laughed a little but sobered quickly. Faint lines of tension around her eyes made her look older than her twenty-two years. With sudden insight Sally saw a nervousness that verged on fear in the plain, likeable face. On the following day Mr Sydney Buxton, MP was to speak in Poplar. Hannah Patten was one of the small brave band pledged to question him on the Liberal Government’s so far empty promises concerning the enfranchisement of women. Up and down the country at such meetings women – and men too – were exercising their constitutional right to ask such questions. And up and down the country reaction had been brutal. Questioners had been evicted violently from meetings while the police looked on and did nothing. Dragged by the hair, punched and kicked by the stewards, the women and their allies were sometimes badly injured. Only last week a young woman’s arm had been broken as she was forcibly ejected from a Cabinet Minister’s public meeting.
‘Ralph’s coming,’ Hannah said, ‘but Ben can’t, though he wanted to
, of course. He’s absolutely got to go to the Health Committee meeting – after fighting all these years for compulsory medical examinations in schools he can’t miss the meeting where they’re discussing how to implement the new law. Given half a chance quite a few would ignore it if they could, as he well knows.’
‘What time’s the Buxton meeting?’
‘Six thirty. We plan to be there by six. We need good seats.’
‘I’ll be ready.’
Hannah still hesitated, a warrior more than ready to risk her own neck but not so ready to be responsible for another’s. ‘You are sure?’
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