Falling Angels (20 page)

To my surprise, it was harder facing Maude than Richard.

Richard's response was predictable--a rage he contained in front of the police but unleashed in the cab home. He shouted about the family name, about the disgrace to his mother, about the uselessness of the cause. All of this I had known to expect, from hearing of the reactions of other women's husbands. Indeed, I have been lucky to go this long without Richard complaining. He has thought my activities with the WSPU a harmless hobby, to be dabbled in between tea parties. It is only now he truly understands that I, too, am a suffragette.

One thing he said in the cab did surprise me. "What about your daughter?" he shouted. "Now that she's firmly on the road to womanhood, she needs a better example than you are setting."

I frowned-the phrase he used was so awkward it must be masking something. "What do you mean?"

Richard stared at me, both incredulous and embarrassed. "She hasn't told you?"

"Told me what?"

"That she's begun her--her ..." He waved his hand vaguely at my skirt.

"She has?" I cried. "When?"

"Months ago."

"How can you know when I don't?"

"I was with her at the time, that's why! And a humiliating moment it was, for both of us. She had to go to Jenny in the end--you weren't home. I should have guessed then how deeply you were into this ridiculous nonsense."

Richard could have said more, but must have sensed he didn't need to. I was remembering when my own courses began--how I had run to my mother, crying, and how she had comforted me.

We were silent the rest of the way back. When we got home I took a candle from the hall table and went directly up to Maude's room. I sat on her bed and looked at her in the dim light, wondering what other secrets she was keeping from me, and how to tell her what I must tell her.

She opened her eyes and sat up before I had said anything. "What is it, Mummy?" she asked so clearly that I am not sure she had been asleep.

It was best to be honest and direct. "Do you know where I was today while you were at school?"

"At the WSPU headquarters?"

"I was at Caxton Hall for the Women's Parliament. But then I went to Parliament Square with some others to try to get into the House of Commons."

"And ... did you?"

"No. I was arrested. I've just come back from Cannon Row Police Station with your father. Who is furious, of course."

"But why were you arrested? What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything. We were simply pushing through the crowd when policemen grabbed us and threw us to the ground. When we got up, they threw us down again and again. The bruises on my shoulders and ribs are quite spectacular. We've all got them."

I did not add that many of those bruises came from the ride in the Black Maria-how the driver took corners so sharply I was thrown about, or how the cubicles in the van were so small that I felt I had been shut in a coffin standing up, or how it smelled of urine, which I was sure the police had done themselves to punish us further.

"Was Caroline Black arrested too?" Maude asked.

"No. She had fallen back to speak to someone she knew, and by the time she caught up the police had already got us. She was terribly upset not to be taken. She even came down to Cannon Row on her own and sat with us."

Maude was silent. I wanted to ask her about what Richard had told me in the cab ride home, but found I couldn't. It was easier to talk about what had happened to me.

"I'll be in court early tomorrow," I continued. "They may send me straight to Holloway. I wanted to say good-bye now."

"But ... how long would you be in-in prison?"

"I don't know. Possibly up to three months."

"Three months! What will we do?"

"You? You'll be fine. There is something I want you to do for me, though."

Maude gazed at me eagerly.

Even before I pulled out the collecting card and began to tell her about self-denial week-a campaign drive the WSPU was initiating to raise money--I knew I was doing the wrong thing. As her mother I should be comforting and reassuring her. Yet even as her face fell I continued to explain that she should ask all our neighbors as well as any visitors to place donations in the card, and that she should send it to the WSPU office at the end of the week.

I don't know why I was so cruel.

As a rule I don't involve myself in this family's comings and goings. I arrive at half-seven in the morning, I cook for them, I leave at seven at night-six if the supper's a cold one. I stay out of the way, I don't have opinions. Or if I do I keep them to myself. I have my own little house, my grown children with their dramas-I don't need more. Not like Jenny, who given half a chance pokes her nose into every story going. It's a miracle she's not had it cut right off.

But I do feel sorry for Miss Maude. I was going home the other evening through a thick fog when I saw her walking just ahead of me. I'd never seen her in Tufnell Park before. She's got no reason to come over here-her life goes in other directions, north and west toward Highgate and Hampstead, not east toward Tufnell Park and Holloway. That's to be expected of a family of that class.

The streets here are not so rough, but all the same I didn't like to see her on her own, especially in that pea-soup. A person could disappear for good in one. I felt I ought to follow to make sure she came to no harm. It was clear enough where she was headed. Can't say I blame her-I'd have done the same in her shoes, though living near it as I do, I don't feel much draw to see it. But then, I don't have family inside. My children act out their dramas within the bounds of the law.

Miss Maude found her way there easy enough-even with the fog and the strange streets she's got a level head on her. When she got there she stopped and stared. The look of the place when it loomed out of the fog must have thrown her. The Castle, they call it round here. True enough it resembles one, with a big arched entrance and stone towers with ramparts. Most peculiar for a prison. My children used to play knights and maidens in front of it, when they dared. There are also rows of little windows set in a brick wall far back from the road, where the prisoners must be.

Then we both got a surprise-blow me if that Black woman wasn't marching up and down in front of the entrance. She's a little thing, but she wore a long gray coat that flapped round her ankles and made her look taller. She was singing this:

Then she turned to the little windows and shouted, "Chin up, my dear-you're halfway through now. Only three weeks to go! And we have so much to do when you come out!" Her voice hardly carried in the fog, though-don't know how she thought anyone inside would hear her.

Miss Maude had seen enough-she turned and ran. I followed but my running days are long over and I lost sight of her. It was dusk now, and I began to worry. The shops were closed, and soon there wouldn't be any decent people out on the street for her to ask directions of.

Then I turned a corner and she was rushing out of the fog toward me, looking very frightened.

"Miss Maude, what on earth are you doing out here?" I said, pretending not to know.

"Mrs. Baker!" She was so relieved to see me that she clutched my arm.

"You should be at home," I scolded, "not wandering the streets."

"I've been ... for a walk and got lost."

I looked at her. There was no point in being coy. "Wanted to see where she is?"

"Yes." Miss Maude hung her head.

I shuddered. "Grim place. I've never liked having it on my doorstep. Here, you!" I called to a passing figure.

"Hallo, Mrs. Baker."

"Miss Maude, this is Jimmy, my neighbor's son. See her to the Boston Arms, will you, Jimmy? She'll know her way from there."

"Thank you, Mrs. Baker," Miss Maude whispered.

I shrugged. "It's not my business," I said. "Not a word of this to anyone. Take care how you go in the fog."

I keep my word.

MARCH 1908

It's chucking down, so our Jenny lets me in from the rain. Mrs. Baker don't say nothing when she sees me--just grunts. Makes me a soft egg, though.

"Lord," our Jenny says, looking out of the window while I sit at the table eating. "What a day to be visiting prison."

"Who's going to prison?" I ask.

Mrs. B. bangs a pot of water onto the range and gives our Jenny a look. Jenny ignores her--she says whatever she likes.

"The master and Miss Maude. They ain't been able to visit till now-them suffragettes can't have visitors the first four weeks. First it were to be just the master, but I heard'em arguing and Miss Maude got her way, bless her. She misses her mum. Though heaven knows why, the woman were hardly round before anyway."

"That's enough, Jenny," Mrs. B. says.

"It don't matter--it's just Simon."

"What doesn't matter?" Maude has come down the stairs, and is standing with her arms clutched over her stomach. She looks peaky to me.

Our Jenny and Mrs. B. both turn quick to look at her. "Nothing, Miss Maude," our Jenny says. "You had enough to eat?"

"I'm not much hungry, thanks."

"Terrible luck, getting the curse on top of the rain on your visiting day."

Maude looks at me then glares at our Jenny.

"For pity's sake, Jenny, leave the girl alone!" Mrs. B. don't often shout. "Get upstairs and clear away the dishes."

Our Jenny runs off. I've enough sense not to say nothing 'bout the curse. "Hallo" is all I says.

"Hello."

Hard to imagine Maude's ma in prison-who ever thought she'd end up there? When I first found out from our Jenny, I let it slip real casual one day to Mr. Jackson Mrs. C. were in Holloway. He jumped like someone'd pinched him.

"Good Lord. Why is she there?"

I didn't really know why, to be truthful. "Women's things, sir."

He stared at me so hard I had to say something more. "You know, them women what goes round on bicycles, chalking signs on the pavement and shouting at rallies and that."

"You mean suffragettes?"

"I suppose so, sir."

"Good Lord," he said again. "Prison is a terrible place for a woman. I hope she is not being mistreated."

"Probably no more'n anyone else in prison, sir. My cousin got out after six months with nothing worse'n flea bites."

"That is not much comfort, Simon."

"Sorry, sir."

I want to say something to Maude now, but can't think of nothing that would help. Then there's a knock at the back door, and Livy comes in dripping wet, and there ain't much chance for me to get a word in. Maude don't look too happy to see her. Livy rushes over and gives her a big hug. She sees me over Maude's shoulder but don't say nothing. She's been funny with me ever since I kissed her. That were over a year ago and she ain't been the same since. Our pa were right, I guess.

Fact is, this is the first time all three of us has been together in a long while. Not like when the girls was younger and used to visit the cemetery all the time.

"Oh, my dear, you look so pale!" Livy says now. "You must be terribly upset about your visit."

The thing about Livy is that she says things like that but she means something else. She don't think it's terribly upsetting Mrs. C. is in Holloway-to her it's great fun, though she would never admit it. She looks so excited now, that I know what's to come next.

She sits Maude down at the table. "Now," she says, "I want to suggest something to you." She's acting like no one else is there-like I'm not sitting at the table, too, and Mrs. B. ain't peeling potatoes at the sideboard, and our Jenny ain't taking a tray with the breakfast things through to the scullery. But she knows we're there and listening. "I know you'll say no, so I want you to promise to be quiet until I've finished what I have to say. Do you promise?"

"All right," Maude says.

"I want to come with you this morning to visit your mother."

"You can't-

"I haven't finished yet."

Maude frowns but stays quiet.

"You know it will be horrid and it will upset you. Don't you want your friend to be there with you, holding your hand and helping you to be as brave as you can in front of your mother?"

We all wait to hear what Maude will say--our Jenny standing in the scullery door, Mrs. B. frowning at a potato skin like she's not listening. "But what about your mother?" Maude says. "And Daddy? I'm sure he won't let you."