No Greater Love (52 page)

‘You have a choice, Maggie,’ he spoke urgently. ‘To give in to the pain and give up on life, or to use your pain to learn from it and become a fuller person. There are some people - like the Pearsons perhaps - who sail through life undisturbed, never being challenged like you have, never exposed to real suffering. But such people are inward-looking, cocooned in their cosy lives, content to drift through life, never having the chance to change. They are the ones to be pitied, Maggie, for at the end of their comfortable, empty lives, what do they have to show for it?’

Maggie searched his lean face, trying to comprehend whether this stern man before her held the answer to her doubts and despair. She saw a face lined with experience and suffering, yet the brown eyes shone with compassion and love. While she sank deeper into the depths of her unhappiness, she was aware that John Heslop might be the only person who could pull her back out of the blackness.

She reached out and held on to him, not knowing if she loved him or not, only aware that he seemed to be offering a dim light in the darkness, with his caring eyes and his strange words about suffering.

They clung to each other and Maggie sobbed out her heart as the wintry light faded from beyond the velvet curtains and the sound of a brass band thumped the chilly air in the street outside.

***

It was John’s idea to take Maggie to London for a holiday.

‘Treat ourselves to a proper honeymoon,’ he joked shyly. ‘Daniel can manage the shop. Like you said, I should be giving the lad more responsibility.’

‘We’ll be there for polling day,’ Maggie said with a stirring of interest. ‘I’d like to see all those women turning up to vote for the first time.’

John laughed, pleased to see his wife taking an interest in the outside world after the past bleak fortnight when she had refused to leave the house. Lloyd George had called an election now the war was over and a bill had been rushed through the Commons allowing women to stand as parliamentary candidates.

‘We could go and hear Miss Christabel Pankhurst speak, or Mrs Despard, or Mrs Pethick-Lawrence. They’re all contesting seats, according to the papers.’

‘Yes,’ Maggie’s eyes lit with enthusiasm, ‘that would be grand!’

In early December, they stayed at a boarding house run by Methodists and spent the days exploring London’s famous sights. Maggie dragged John along to countless political meetings to listen to former suffragettes speaking from the hustings. Now they represented different parties and concerns, but Maggie experienced again the thrill of the public meeting with its lively speeches, its hecklers and jostling crowds. London seemed full of servicemen in uniform waiting impatiently to be demobbed.

It had been so long since she had felt any fervour for politics and protest that she was quite taken by surprise by the enthusiasm which gripped her now. It lit inside her like a small fire, fanning quickly as she listened to speaker after speaker.

‘It’s so grand to see these women in the flesh after all this time,’ Maggie enthused, ‘really see them - and hear their voices!’

‘That could be you, Maggie,’ John said, slipping his arm through hers as they left an open-air platform of vying politicians.

Maggie laughed. ‘Who would come and listen to me?’ she scoffed.

‘I remember a young woman who used to stand on street corners accosting decent folk with suffragette newspapers every Saturday afternoon before the war,’ he teased. ‘Plenty folk listened to you then.’

‘How do you know?’ Maggie asked in astonishment.

‘I was sometimes one of them,’ John confessed with a bashful smile.

Maggie laughed, then added reflectively, ‘That was different, I had a prize to fight for then. And I was that impatient for change.’

‘There’re plenty more prizes out there,’ John insisted, ‘and plenty that needs changing.’

She stopped and smiled up at him. ‘John Heslop, you’re growing more radical the older you get!’ she laughed.

He squeezed her arm. ‘It’s having a wife of twenty-six that does it. I feel I’m growing younger by the day.’

On 14 December, Election Day, they roamed around London, watching the voters arrive at polling stations in Chelsea and Battersea, Richmond and Chiswick where women candidates were standing. Maggie, wearing her frayed suffragette sash, stood and clapped the women voters as they marched proudly into the polling booths. There were no scenes or demonstrations, just a proud exercising of their right to vote. Their quiet dignity caught at Maggie’s throat.

By mid-afternoon it was almost dark and Maggie noticed that John was chilled through.

‘I’m sorry, we’ve been out too long. Let’s go to a tearoom to warm up,’ she suggested. ‘I’ve seen enough.’

They entered the first cafe that they came to, its windows steamed up and its door decorated with festive holly. As they were ushered to a table by a waitress, Maggie glanced across the room and her heart stopped.

‘Look, John,’ she gasped. ‘It’s Miss Alice!’

Alice Pearson looked up at the same moment and at first did not recognise the neatly dressed, pale-faced woman staring at her. It was John Heslop that she placed and then she realised who his companion was.

Maggie saw the look of discomfort on the older woman’s face but knew that she could not ignore them. Maggie approached her table and held out a hand.

‘Miss Pearson,
^’
Maggie said stiffly, ‘this is a great day for us women, don’t you agree?’

Alice hesitated, thankful that she had slipped into the cafe on her own and did not have to explain her relationship with this lower-class woman to anyone. The cafe was only a minute’s walk from her Chelsea studio and she often came in for afternoon tea.

Then Alice fought with her prejudice, instilled over countless years, telling herself that she no longer acknowledged such differences. She took Maggie’s proffered hand.

‘Maggie, Mr Heslop - this is a surprise. How are you both? Please, will you join me?’ she said as graciously as her conflicting emotions would allow.

Here was the girl who had caused her family so much strife and made her so angry, Alice thought, suddenly disturbing her contented world again. For she was contented, living in London and advancing her career as a photographer. She had had a successful war, Alice thought wryly, for it had given her the opportunity to break out of the stifling provinciality of her home life and travel into the dangers of the Western Front, capturing the war on film. It had changed her from a self-opinionated snob, she admitted candidly to herself, to someone who thought more deeply about the world - more highly of the common people whose bravery she had witnessed time and time again.

But Alice was forced to admit that if it had not been for Maggie Beaton she would have experienced none of it. She had been furious at the desecration of her beloved Hebron House, and after the arson attack she had never felt the same about her home, as if it were somehow sullied. Looking back, she wondered why. After all, it was only a summerhouse, a symbol - as Maggie’s arson had pointed out - of the stranglehold of privilege that her father and brother exercised over her and other women.

Disenchanted by Herbert’s new regime there, Alice had taken her camera and set off aimlessly for London in 1916. A chance meeting with a Fleet Street editor had sent her off to France and from there to the trenches in Flanders.

Looking at Maggie now, Alice faced up to the truth, that this stormy, unrefined young woman with the passionate eyes and voice, who came from the obscurity of Newcastle’s slums, had given her the courage to cast aside her security and plunge into the unknown. She had told herself that if a working-class girl like Maggie Beaton could risk everything, then so could she.

Often, in France, Alice had thought of Maggie in prison and wondered what had become of the tragic, tempestuous girl. She had been plagued by guilt that she had turned her back on Maggie and the Movement when they needed her support most, merely to advance the interests of her own family, a family with whom contact was increasingly rare. Now she was about to find out.

Maggie gave her a cautious look, surprised by the woman’s civility, then sat down. For a few minutes they talked about the election and the end of the war and Alice told them about her studio and her war photography. Tea came. John told her proudly about his marriage to Maggie in the late summer and his continuing work at the mission. Alice managed to hide her surprise that such an unlikely pair had ended up as husband and wife but was struck by how at ease they were in each other’s company, so unlike the petty warring between her brother Herbert and her unhappy sister-in-law Felicity.

Suddenly Maggie leaned across the table and blurted out, ‘I need your help, Miss Alice.’

‘Maggie,’ John tried to stop her. ‘You mustn’t—’

‘Please, John,’ Maggie pleaded. ‘This might be my only chance of seeing Christabel.’

Alice looked at them in confusion. ‘I’ll help if I can. But who is Christabel?’

‘She’s my daughter,’ Maggie told her bluntly, her grey eyes fiercely proud, ‘my illegitimate daughter.’

Alice was flabbergasted. She just sat and stared, not knowing what to say. Yet she was less scandalised than she would have been five years ago. The old Alice would have recoiled in disgust and seen Maggie’s behaviour as confirmation of the lower classes’ loose morals. But the war had opened her eyes to many things, not least the fact that ordinary people’s lives had been thrown into turmoil by separation, fear of death and the struggle for survival. She knew nothing of the reasons for Maggie’s predicament and would not condemn her as she once would have done.

John intervened. ‘Maggie’s child was taken into a children’s home endowed by your family - Hebron Children’s Home.’

Alice nodded. ‘I know it. I was on the interview board for the appointment of the housemother in nineteen fifteen. It was the last task I did before leaving the north, as a matter of fact.’

‘We went there to find Christabel last month,
^’
John continued, ‘but she’d already been adopted.’

‘So how can I help?’ Alice asked, baffled.

‘We think Herbert Pearson adopted her,’ Maggie replied. ‘It is true your brother has a young daughter of about two, isn’t it?’

Alice gawped at her. ‘Yes, Georgina, but...’

That would explain all the secrecy surrounding her niece, Georgina, she suddenly thought. Herbert and Felicity were trying to pass the girl off as their own, Felicity having kept a reclusive life at Oxford Hall since Zeppelins had flown up the Tyne and made Hebron House too risky to live in. But Alice had been almost certain that the girl had been adopted in an attempt to present her brother as an upright family man. Herbert had once told her in a fit of self-pity that Felicity had not allowed him into her bed for years. Was it possible, Alice wondered, that the wilful Georgina who appeared to be ignored by her parents as much as Henry was could really be Maggie’s daughter? Was she their attempt to stitch together a marriage that was coming apart at the seams?

If it were true, Alice thought, she felt deeply sorry for Maggie but was reluctant to become involved in a battle with her brother over the girl. Since Herbert had become an MP, Alice had grown steadily apart from him, disillusioned by his broken promises of allowing her more involvement in the family business. After her father had died her visits north had become short and infrequent - a token few days to see her ailing mother whose memory was shrivelling as fast as her once beautiful face and figure.

‘It seems rather farfetched, Maggie,’ Alice blustered. ‘Have you any proof that my niece Georgina is your daughter?’

‘A photograph from the home,’ Maggie said eagerly, reaching into an inner coat pocket. ‘The housemother let me keep it though she gave away no confidences. But John and I recognised Oxford Hall behind her.’

She handed the photograph of Christabel to Alice and saw the look of recognition on the older woman’s face.

‘You took that picture, didn’t you, Miss Alice?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is it the girl you know as Georgina?’

Alice nodded slowly.

Maggie felt her throat water. ‘Please, help me to see her,’ she pleaded.

Alice looked at her drawn, vulnerable face and saw how she suffered. For a moment she wondered who the father was, but knew she would not ask.

She sighed. ‘I’ll be visiting my mother at Christmas. Perhaps I could arrange to take the children out for the day.’

‘Aye!’ Maggie responded quickly. ‘That would be a grand idea. You could bring them to our house for dinner.’

Alice cleared her throat uncomfortably. ‘I think it might draw less comment if I was to bring them to Hebron House and you could come over and meet them. I could pretend you were ...’ Alice floundered for an explanation.

‘An old colleague from the suffrage movement,’ Maggie said swiftly. She was not going to be passed off as some former nurserymaid or servant.

‘Yes, very well,’ Alice agreed. She finished her tea.

‘That’s very good of you, Miss Alice,’ John thanked her and pulled out a visiting card with their Sandyford address. ‘Perhaps you could send us a note with the arrangements.’

Alice took the card and prepared to leave.

‘Would it be possible to visit your studio while we’re in London?’ Maggie asked unexpectedly.

Alice was surprised but pleased at her interest in her work. ‘Of course,’ she agreed and told them the address.

They arranged to call a couple of days later, before taking the train north again.

Maggie’s spirits were quite lifted by the encounter and she simmered with energy and optimism. John was delighted to see her more like her old self but feared that her expectations were too high.

‘If this meeting with Christabel takes place,’ he warned her, ‘you will be cautious, won’t you? You can’t go telling the child you’re her mother or any such wildness.’

‘I know that,’ Maggie answered impatiently. ‘I just want to see her.’

John kissed her head in a gesture of affection that told her he knew how she felt. These past two weeks with Maggie in London had been the happiest he could recall. He had revelled in having her to himself, sharing experiences and conversations that they normally had no time for in their busy lives at home. And to crown it all, not only had they shared the same room at the boarding house but also the same bed.