Park Lane (17 page)

She stops at the edge of the road and looks down the hill. She can see the Thames at the bottom, cold and grey. Is that what London is, she asks herself? Is that what it will feel like if I am caught?

An errand boy is running towards her, about to pass quicker than a word, but he smiles at her as he trots, and she calls to him, Hare Court? Through the archway. What archway? Thissun here. And he tilts his head towards a building on the other side of the road.

Through she goes, looking this way and that, but it’s not Hare Court here and she waits at the far end for another boy to pass for they’re tearing up and down these alleys like it’s nobody’s business. One boy and two turns more, and she’s there.

It is dark, this building. The brick is dirtier than she’s seen before, and there’s a brown brick wall right opposite the door. Just inside the doorway is a young man, about Michael’s age, arms full of paper tied with pink ribbon. Grace shrinks back. She’ll stand by the wall, melt into it.

Grace keeps her eyes on her feet, glancing up at each echo of steps on cobbles, and down again. She doesn’t want to be seen as staring. It’s raining in any case, and her bonnet tilted forward is keeping the drops off her face. It’ll be a mess, though, the bonnet; she should have brought an umbrella, but she didn’t think, and now the tips of her boots are darkening in the wet.

And there he is, in his mackintosh, head forward. He doesn’t see her, passes right by. Michael, she calls, and he jolts round.

‘What are you doing here? What’s wrong?’ He looks worried.

‘Nothing’s wrong.’

Why should something be wrong? Does he think that’s the only reason she’d come to see him? ‘I’ve something for you.’

‘Couldn’t it wait till Sunday?’ He begins to walk again and she falls in with him.

Rude, she thinks, and from her own brother, but she’ll not let him push her away like that.

Doesn’t he realise the trouble she’s gone to?

‘No, it couldn’t, Michael.’

‘Show me then, Grace. Quick.’

‘No, Michael, not here, round the corner.’

‘I’ve no time for that. I’m starving hungry, Grace. You’ll have to walk with me.’

He’s off and Grace is near trotting to keep up. She doesn’t want to show him here, there are too many people, what if someone should see, though she can’t think who. The bag is swinging side to side as she goes and she reaches in, grasps it and pulls, but the book is catching on the opening at the top. It’s out now, she’s handed it to him. He stops dead. Then he turns it over with such a strange expression on his face that Grace can’t tell whether he’s excited or disgusted, and this pricks her. She feels her skin drawing back across her face and she’s having to fight more than little to go on looking so tender towards him.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘The library.’

‘In the office?’

‘No, in the house. We all live in the house, remember.’

‘They lent it to you?’ He turns it over in his hands and opens the first couple of pages, looking right over them. ‘Grace, do you know what it’s worth?’

He’s telling her off. My Lord, all she’s done, and he’s telling her off. She’s a mind to let him know … but she can’t, can she? She can’t say anything at all, and she’s no idea what it’s worth in money. To her it is worth her position and her ability to send money home.

‘Don’t you want to read it, Michael?’ She can hear the anger in her own voice.

‘Grace, it’s signed by the man who wrote it. Did they know you were taking it out of the house? Why do you think they’d want you to read this?’

‘Why shouldn’t I read it, Michael? You weren’t the only one to have lessons with Miss Sand, remember. And it’s hardly a locked-up sort of book.’

‘What’s a locked-up sort of book?’

Grace blushes. Michael’s eyes open wide, stare at her.

‘What sort of family have you become involved with, Grace?’

What sort of family? They’re a darn sight better than those he’s working for, she’s sure of that. She blurts out a bit too quick: ‘Just talk, Michael.’

‘Not talk you should be having, a girl like you. Did he ask you for anything?’

‘No, Michael. It’s not like that there.’

He turns the book over in his hands. ‘You must be doing well, Grace. I’ll wager he doesn’t do this for his housemaids.’

On the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, Grace sees a shop window with barely a dozen books laid out. They’re all sizes, one she could fit into the palm of her hand, another is the size of the Bible in church on Sunday, and this one is open, stretched wide. Grace looks at it through the glass; there are pictures in it, and thick, foreign writing. She thinks she can see a word or two she knows, but the rest, well, it’s not English, not that she’s seen. There’s a book, too, which looks like the one she’s given Michael. A thin binding, and leather, not so old, type like it should be. She doesn’t want to know but she wants to find out, can’t go past now without asking, even if it will make the worry worse. Now Michael’s put the worry there, she can’t get it out of her mind.

Grace hasn’t much time left but she rings the bell. The door opens and the man in front of her is wearing a black jacket, with waistcoat and pinstripe trousers and seems too modern for the books, though he’s losing his hair, most of it gone. He looks her up
and down as though to say the cheek of it, to be coming into his shop.

‘I’d like to enquire about a price,’ she says in her best Park Lane posh, and, his eyebrows raised, the man lets her in.

Which? he asks. The one in the window, she replies. Across they go and Grace peers over the back of the display. She points.

‘Just six pounds, madam.’

Just
six pounds? It’s half of what she earns in a year. She turns and goes so quickly that she’s almost stumbling out of the door.

Still, Grace sleeps better that night, and Saturday too. She hasn’t much fear that anybody will look for the book in the library, she’s never seen any of upstairs go in. It’s more the fear that somebody might find it on her. When she’s not touching the book, it’s not touching her. So when Michael gives it back to her on Sunday, and she feels the weight of it in her hands, the worry comes on her again.

‘I’ve read it,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’

He’s looking down at his feet as he hands it to her. Why, he’s as sheepish as they come, but it’s a thank you, and it’s meant and it fills her up a little, makes her feel better about what she’s done to get it.

‘You’d better read it now, Grace.’

‘Why, Michael’ – she begins to say, but now he’s looking at her like she’s the riddle of the Sphinx – ‘do you think I didn’t read it already?’

‘Did you?’

‘Just teasing, Michael.’

‘Better remember why Mr Townsend gave it to you, Grace. It wasn’t to lend to me. He’ll ask you what’s in it.’

Mr Townsend, who’s he, Grace is about to ask? Then she remembers it’s the name of her employer that she gave to Michael.

‘I’ve no time now, Michael.’ She’s quick today, and speaking
straight ahead as though she’s too grand to look at him. ‘You’ve had it all week. You’ll have to tell me what’s in it. And, Michael?’

‘Yes, Grace.’

‘Don’t speak to me as though I am a child.’

Now she turns, to be honest, to gloat a little, see him taken aback. But he’s not listening. He’s looking at her and the book is pouring out of his mouth, his words full of anger with the world. It’s as if she’s suddenly turned on a stiff hot-water tap that will never go back. She stares at her brother, dead proud of the way he can talk, and dead nervous as to where it will take him.

In the library the next morning Grace looks up, searches for the gap on the shelves to put the book back into, but the books appear to have expanded, filled it out. Or was that how she had arranged them? The steps are on the far side of the room and Grace remembers the rattle and the grind of moving them and the attention it might bring. Then she looks back up at the shelves and wonders if it would ever be noticed if she didn’t put the book back. And when, after breakfast, she is cleaning the telephone booth on the ground floor around the back of the main stairs, she sees a directory on the shelf. Shutting herself in, small duster in hand as though she is scraping out the last grey grains, Grace opens the pages. If nobody’s read the book she took for years, who’s going to read it now, or ever again?

After dinner, for there’s nobody for luncheon today, Grace heads south-east, her handbag over her arm. Hyde Park Corner; she’d like to walk through the arch some day. She hasn’t time now as she doesn’t know how long she will be. Perhaps on the way back. If she’s quick enough maybe she’ll have a chance to talk to Joseph too.

It’s him that’s turning away now. He looks at her like she’s stuck a knife in his stomach and shows her his back, even when they’re cleaning the silver together. She should be relieved, shouldn’t she? But the silence is ringing in her ears and she just needs to explain to
him, tell him how she doesn’t want to give him ideas, seeing as she has plans of her own, and she’s taken by her obligations. But she can’t get close. And the house, it feels hollow now without his smile. But that hollowness makes it seem not so bad, what she’s about to do.

Grace walks through Belgrave Square and its shiny black doors in tall white stucco, only dusty around the windows. Even the houses with three windows across, and large ones at that, look almost cramped compared to Park Lane. But how could she think that?

It’s strange how quickly your perspective can change.

Elizabeth Street is narrow and pretty. The white is broken up by shopfront windows pushing out from the houses in blues, greens and browns. Grace finds the shop she is looking for halfway down on the right. The books in the window look more like the one she is carrying under her coat than those back on Fleet Street. A small man answers the door, a smile on his face she can’t read. She follows him inside, where she draws the book out of her handbag and places it on the counter. He picks it up and opens it. His eyebrows flicker as he sees the signature.

Grace has no idea whether his offer is enough, but it’s enough for her. Besides, if he’s as good as stolen from her then he’s not going to say anything, is he?

She leaves with five pounds in her pocket.

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?