Park Lane Page 11

  They turn into a faded pink room next to the dining room. A handful of velvet armchairs and a couple of sofas are pushed back against the wall. Half a dozen card tables have been carried in, put up and set side by side to make a single large central platform. Some of the women in here are older, perhaps in their fifties or sixties. It’s not some fad of youth, is it, being a suffragette, and Bea wonders whether, the older a woman grows, the more she cares about the vote. Maybe each year of minding adds up.

  The women here have perfectly pinned hair, their buttoned-up shirts pale. In front of them, beside them and in piles by their feet are cascades of large brown envelopes. The window beyond them is wide open. It feels several degrees cooler in here than in the typewriter room, and Bea shivers.

  ‘It’s not that hot in here since Mrs Montague chiselled that open yesterday,’ says Celeste. ‘Block heating, you see. Nobody has an iota of control over it. Fetch your coat if you like but I’d stick in your shirtsleeves, it’s easier to move your arms, and you will heat up as you go along. There’s a space on the table just over there, you’ll want the draught. I’ll bring you a pile, and stamps. You’ll need a pen. Oh, and the list.’

  Bea’s shuffling her knees and hobble skirt under the table when Celeste returns.

  ‘We’re up to “N”,’ says Celeste. ‘You need to be fast but do write the addresses clearly. Smudges are definitely off. Causes a terrible stink when it goes to the neighbours by mistake. Stamp first, address next, tick it off and into the box at your feet. Well, ideally. But we can scrabble up from the floor later.’

  On the table in front of Bea is a pile of leaflets printed on thin, off-white paper. The type is in columns and as dense as a newspaper. Headlined across the top are the words SELF-DENIAL WEEK. Bea reads on.

  This is a crucial period for the Union, and more funds are urgently needed. We therefore propose to repeat the success of our SELF-DENIAL WEEK. This will run from Saturday 7th March to 14th. Members and their sympathetic friends are invited to abstain from luxuries, for example, tea, coffee and cocoa, and submit the funds saved to the above address, clearly marked inside as to how they have been raised. Alternatives to self-denial might be performing EXTRA WORK, and any OTHER FUNDRAISING ACTIVITIES that can be thought of. The results will be announced in a Rally at the Albert Hall on Saturday 25th April at 7.30pm. Tickets, at 6d., are available from the same address. In the meantime please see the newspapers for announcements of meetings to be held.

  Self-denial, how appropriately Lenten and fitting for this time of year. Mrs Pankhurst is indeed the new Messiah. It is, Bea thinks, quite brilliant; there is something rather rousing about hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women willingly suffering for a belief, and one week is an imaginable target, though Bea is slightly stumped by the coffee and tea budget. All Bea’s purchases are on accounts billed to home and picked up by Mother and it is hardly as if she will ever in her life buy food. She has no idea who buys the tea, although without it the house would probably grind to a halt. However, this is not the moment to ponder, or she will be on permanent tea duty. At best.

  Bea watches the other women. No clatter but still little chat in here as tongues move from envelope seal to envelope seal, in between, pens flying across the envelope fronts far faster than Bea can write. Well, faster than Bea can write on the first, second, third envelope – thank God she can sit upright as she does this … Speed up and, miraculously, she does. By the time she’s passed a dozen, she’s going as well as any of them and still picking up speed. Fold, stuff, lick. Write, wave dry, tick the list. Soon she’s done her lot, fetched another pile. She’s even been brought a cup of tea. These women soak up tea and so, now, does Bea. Keep on, she tells herself, heads are turning, watching her at the speed she is going. Maybe it could be written on her tombstone, She Could Fill an Envelope Well.

  The paper-cuts on Bea’s fingers are mounting up but she doesn’t stop, reckoning that it’s fine so long as there’s no blood on the envelopes – and perhaps such battle scars are the thing to have. At some point Celeste, apparition that she has become, materialises, telling her to slow down, Bea old girl, it’s not a race, before vanishing again.

  Bea can’t slow down, she’s on fire. Her heart is pumping and her eyes are wide open, now she’s doing this there’s no going back to plodding along, she’s lost any desire to stop. Each envelope, she tells herself, is a few shillings more to stop a woman having tubes stuck down her throat. It’s more than that: as the pile on the floor beside her turns into a pool, the elation rises in her. This is more like it: look what’s she done, what she’s doing. It’s only a moment, a minute, or feels like it, until she glances at her list and there are no more names there. She has finished. Bea draws breath; she leans back, stretches her arms and rolls her head from side to side. Then she examines the reddening lines on her fingers before looking down at the floor. Envelopes are scattered around; has she done a lot, too many, can you do too many? God, what a mess, though. She climbs down on to her hands and knees and the room pauses.

  Bea flushes. Not again. Good Lord, she’s a rose-tinted lighthouse this morning. There must be a rip in the back of her skirt. What humiliation, given what they must think of her already. Serves her right to be so fixed on fashion – ‘frippery’, some of these women here must think it. Thinking of what some of them look like, though, they shouldn’t be missing out on its favours. Watch it, Beatrice, don’t be a cat. She wonders where the rip is, she can’t feel the skirt give anywhere, nor, come to think of it, did she hear anything go. Blast her skirt, that’s it, she gives in, she’ll have a couple of rather more practical old ones altered.

  There’s a voice in the hall. Not one of the voices in here, all cut-glass or making a good effort at it, but a flat-vowelled voice, pushing the sounds out. Bea raises her head to look in its direction, and sees that the rest of the room is looking in that direction, too. Thank God, it’s not her skirt they are staring at after all.

  ‘I’ve burnt two and I’ll burn ten more. I’d do anything for her, I would. Carry one of those bombs in me case to John O’Groats and back …’

  Bea lets the handful of envelopes she is holding fall to the floor.

  ‘Hssh, now. Not in the hallway.’

  The figures pass the doorway quickly. It’s the woman with arched eyebrows, speaking far more tenderly than she spoke to Bea. Bea can’t see the woman on the other side. Just glimpses a plain brown wool dress. The footsteps and protests go along the passage towards the kitchen, and then vanish.

  9

  THE MAN WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE SITTING BETWEEN Edie and Bea that night is late. The dining room is filling up with silk and fur stoles, and there’s a mumbling from the far side of the table that they should put their orders in. As good as the Ritz is, the service can slow down and they’ll be late for the Adelphi. Not that it will matter much if they skip the first act. The show’s been on for months and they must have all seen it at least twice. Even Bea has.

  Edie leans across the gap and tells Bea she can see something different about her. What is it? A new admirer? Already? Edie’s eyes light up with the suggestion. So she holds the same view, thinks Bea, as Mother. For a moment Bea wonders whether she should tell Edie, but before she has had time to think any more of it a well-fed man not much older than Bea is sitting down between them.

  ‘Sorry, chaps,’ he says to the table. ‘Those damn women blocking the road.’

  Bea feels a flutter of pride, then her stomach tightens. My God, the thought that any of them might find out. They’d think she’d lost her mind, at best. Even worse, they would think it was all caused by John. Which it is not, she tells herself quite firmly, it is because of Mrs Pankhurst and, well, because she wants more to her life than sitting around a table at the Ritz, even if her hands are so worn out they feel as though they’re made of wood. It is harder work than she’d have thought, doing the same task over and over again. She fumbles a little with her knife and fork as she eats and blames it on playing the p
iano, praying that none of them register that they have never seen her near the keys. ‘Seamstress’s fingers,’ says a girl on the other side of the table. They all laugh, and Bea wishes Edward were here to smile across the table at her.

  The chorus holds its last note a little longer than the rest. The first act is coming to an end and Bea looks up from the stalls to the circle and boxes, hoping to see a woman stand up and leaflets flutter down. There is no one. What a pity, she thinks.

  She ducks out of dancing afterwards, it’s the last thing she feels like; she’s done quite enough for the day. There’s a couple sloping off early with her and they offer to drive her home. Is she all right, they ask over the rattle of the motor, not blue? Bea cringes at the question. It is as though she is thought of not only as heartbroken, but as some kind of invalid as a result. Then the couple fall into a complicit silence. Bea senses them continuing to talk to each other, a thread connecting the two, and she tries to remember whether she ever did this with John.

  It’s almost midnight when Bea patters into the house. The hall is still, as though the place is deserted. The buzz of the day vanishes from her and Bea feels quite alone. She takes the steps one at a time, her head full of pictures of carbon paper and piles of envelopes she can barely see over, the voice of that woman in brown vowing to raze the country to the ground still vibrating in her ears and she wonders whether, if she goes back to Lauderdale Mansions again and again, she will end up like that. Bea checks herself. There is a clear line to be drawn and, dammit, Beatrice, you are jolly well going to do so.

  As Bea reaches the first floor she sees the lights are on in the red drawing room. She walks around the gallery to turn them off but when she enters the room she is met by a waft of cigar-smoke and brandy. Mother is sitting at one end of the green sofa with her back to the door, staring at the drawn curtains.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Mother doesn’t turn around. ‘Come in here.’

  Bea obeys. She walks around the sofa until she is standing in front of her mother.

  ‘Beatrice.’ On the side table is a decanter half full, and a tumbler half empty. ‘Sit down, come and talk to me.’

  ‘Are you all right, Mother?’

  ‘Sit down, Beatrice.’

  ‘Actually, I was feeling a bit—’

  Mother reaches forward and grabs Bea’s arm. ‘Don’t go.’ Her grip is tight, almost pulling Bea down, and she gives way. Next to her Bea sees another tumbler, full, on the side table at the far end. Mother has had a visitor. But that, thinks Bea, is not strange. Mother often has visitors at this time of night. Politicians leave Parliament late.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mother?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Everything.’

  ‘Come, Mother—’

  ‘No, I’ll not come, come. For forty-five years, since I first drew breath, I’ve put my all into everything I’ve done. I am the engine, Beatrice, of everything that happens around me, inside this house and out. I make people be heard, all those men with causes and ideas and not a chance, without me, of airing their views in the right rooms.’

  Mother is not even looking at Bea, just at the fireplace, as though the flames will provide an answer to her woes.

  ‘And one by one they leave me. I can’t even persuade’ – she looks down towards the full tumbler – ‘that our way is the only way, the only way, Bea, to make things change. And that we must stick with it. We just have to be patient. It matters so much to me, Bea, so, so much. These half-crazed harpies will push us back years, of that I am sure, I’ve been told it quite directly – and more than once. Why do people either give up or lose control? It always seems to be one or the other. You would have thought that holding firm wasn’t that hard a task, staying loyal to a person you care about, or at least professed to care about. But what sort of fool am I?’ She reaches for the tumbler beside her. ‘Sentimentality is ruin. And then there’s all of you. Everyone gone, or going. Edward will crack off on some adventure soon, and where will I be then? Clemmie appears now and then, but, rather thanklessly, is paddling as fast as she can in the opposite direction. In any case, she’s hardly been a supporter. You have been, though, my darling Beatrice. Thank God you’re not going yet.’

  Mother’s grip has moved to Bea’s hand which, even though it seems she could hardly be holding tighter, she now squeezes. Bea thinks she can hear her mother’s voice tremble. She can count on her fingers the number of times she has heard this and she is struggling to remember the last time Mother was so emotional towards her. How much she has wanted this but, now, when at last it comes, Bea is betraying her. A lump rises in her throat. Mother releases her hand to reach for the tumbler beside her and Bea has a sudden, visceral fear that Mother, Mother whose iron will has dictated Bea’s entire passage through life, is in tears.

  Bea draws herself in. If Mother can fall, well, anybody can. She sees her mother lift a handkerchief to her eyes and it feels as though the certainty that Bea has always relied upon is crumbling in front of her.

  ‘Don’t desert me, Beatrice. Promise. I need you with me.’

  The words hover on Bea’s lips: ‘Of course, Mother.’ She believes both that she will never, can never, desert her mother, and that she may be lying through her teeth. As she prepares herself for the deceit, footsteps come up behind them, and both of them are engulfed in a waft of alcohol. The back of the sofa dips under the weight of a pair of arms and a shadow falls over Bea. Edward’s voice, slurring slightly, deepens behind her.

  ‘My two favourite ladies.’

  Bea steels herself for the gush of praise from Mother but what comes next is quite the opposite, for Mother is standing up and shaking as she speaks.

  ‘Good God, Edward, you’re half cut.’

  ‘Mother dearest, that is slander. I am fully cut.’

  ‘You, too, Edward. You whom I least thought would let me down. Your life is a mess, Edward. You are out at all hours, the friends you bring back wreck the billiard room, and Lord knows where you’ve been beforehand. You should be down at Beauhurst, or anywhere in the country, getting some fresh air on a horse. Hunt, shoot, fish, Edward, isn’t that what you’re supposed to be doing? Frankly, I’d rather see you in the cavalry, or going off on some expedition. I shan’t miss this new Edward, if the one I used to know has vanished. God knows what your father would have thought if he were still alive.’

  Even Bea feels knocked about by this tirade, but the phrase that is ringing around her head is the last, ‘if he were still alive … if he were still alive …’ Mother is talking about Father as if he were dead. Then, of course, he is as good as dead to Mother, if not to all of them. Perhaps it is the thought of why that has made Edward so inflame her.

  Bea passes the next few days with her mind a jumble of stuffed envelopes, Mother and the question of whether she can go back to Lauderdale Mansions. Christ, she spends half of her waking time railing to herself about Mother, and then a few tears and Bea is back at the apron-strings. She could give up on it, do her dutiful round of dances and branch meetings of comparatively docile suffragists, recover from the hideousness of the John business and marry somebody her family actually liked. Part of this, to be frank, doesn’t sound so unappealing.

  However, Celeste has held out the proverbial apple and Bea has sunk her teeth in. She’s not betraying Mother for some idle thrill but for a belief that will achieve precisely what Mother is struggling for. Mother, if you knew what I was doing, she reasons, then you would respect me more, you’d be damned proud of me, that I am doing something.

  Mrs Pankhurst’s words are still in Bea’s head – Can you keep your self-respect any longer? – and Bea feels a tingling from her chest to her cheeks. Mrs Pankhurst, she thinks, and in her rises a swirl of desires to hit back where she is being hit, and giddy herself up to yesterday’s high. If Bea believes, and she does, then things will change and she, Beatrice, will leave her mark on the world. She will have made something of her life, rather than have drifted through it.

  She can’t n
ot go back to Lauderdale Mansions. That single bite of enthusiasm has made her feel as though she would wither away without it. Mother, well, Mother simply must not find out.

  By nine o’clock on Tuesday Bea’s walking in through the door at Lauderdale Mansions and she’s clearly not the first. Maybe none of these women here sleeps. She passes the typing room, which is already exhaling muggy air, and reaches the door of the room-of-the-satisfying-envelopes. It is empty and she pauses in the doorway.

  ‘Go!’ The voice behind her is hard and angry, as though she has done something terribly, terribly wrong. My God, it occurs to her that it’s not a question of Mother knowing about Bea, but of these women knowing about Mother, and if they know she is Celeste’s niece, they must surely have realised. They must think her either a traitor or a spy, and what do they do with spies here? Bea feels slightly sick. Whoever it is speaking to her is about to tell her, at the very best, that she never wants to see Bea here again.

  Bea has to turn round. She really doesn’t want to, but she has at some point to face the door. Or walk out backwards. Which is not, right now, so terrible a proposition.

  It is the woman with the devilish eyebrows. Bea looks down at the floor, waiting for the next words ‘… and never come back …’ They don’t come. Instead the woman sighs, her whole chest heaving up and down as though she’s expelling the spirits from her.

  ‘… into the typewriter room … We’re doing the advertisements today.’