Park Lane (9 page)

‘This is ridiculous, Mother, it is simply embarrassing for us all, don’t you see that?’

‘That’s not a wise comment, Clementine, from a young lady who is supposed to be about to come out into society. You need my help to find a husband.’

‘Aunt Celeste escaped without a husband,’ Bea interrupted.

‘She was asked to leave. It became inappropriate to have her with us any longer. Anyhow, there’s little joy in being the spinster sister in the attic. Or anywhere.’

‘Surely,’ returned Clemmie, ‘I’m hardly going to find a husband if I appear to be some ranting banner-waver.’

That was a little unfair, for Mother’s National Union protests are peaceful and efficient – if ineffective, thinks Bea. After last June’s Derby and Emily Davison’s miserable death that followed it, the National Union had rallies rippling up and down the country for weeks. The climax was a great march into Hyde Park, a blistering day and an ocean of a hundred thousand men and women marching from almost every town you could put a name to. Bea stood by Mother at the drawing-room window, the field glasses printing rings on her cheeks. Below streamed an armada of boaters and the
odd bowler, sails of banners above them. The two of them went down into the sea of people, and floated along with the fluid, almost graceful, movement. The march was magnificent, yet almost a year later appeared to have achieved nothing at all.

The crowd here in Campden Hill Square is very different to those marchers – there’s a hardness and an urgency to them. And they are jam-packed into a narrow street, ready to explode.

Mrs Pankhurst vanishes and the balcony is empty, though the crowd is still shouting and cheering. In a minute she’ll return, she must return, for the encore. Instead Mrs Pankhurst comes out of the front door. One advantage of being this distance off is that Bea is far enough up the hill to have a view. At least Bea thinks Mrs Pankhurst comes out of the front door, because all she can see is Mrs Pankhurst’s infamous ‘bodyguard’, a dozen battleaxes of women brandishing Indian clubs as if they were swords. No, there’s a black feather in there, poking up between the clubs. Behind Bea, a band starts up and the crowd in front of her pushes back to make space for their leader and her bodyguard. The hat of the lady in grey is against Bea’s chest, brim digging in. Bea in turn is pushing into the people behind her and gasping for air and she wonders whether this will stop before she can no longer breathe. She is pushed forward again as the crowd surges towards the house with the balcony, taking Bea with it. Umbrellas, walking sticks, there’s a forest of them around her ankles and Bea is tripping with every other step, her arms are pushed into her sides and her breasts are being squashed flat against whosoever is in front of her. Bea finds herself swallowing again and again, as though she is trying to keep down the fear rising inside her.

Now there’s a whistling and shouting, a new sort of shouting. Police! My God, they’re here. What has Bea done, coming here? Blast Aunt Celeste, she must have realised this would happen; what’s she trying to achieve – Bea in handcuffs? Mother devastated? For a moment, Bea is upright and can see down the hill to where, closer to Holland Park Avenue, a cohort of arched helmets and
raised thin batons are slowly but steadily pushing their way through the crowd towards the Indian clubs. A helmet sinks into the crowd to a cheer.

Something hard and round-ended is digging into Bea’s back and she twists around. God almighty, it’s a club, and the woman holding it is lifting it high in the air as she tries to push past Bea. Bea lets her squeeze past, almost pulling Bea’s coat off her in the process. Let her go forward, Bea mutters, please keep that as far away as possible. But there’s another club, and another, there’s no keeping away from them, even umbrellas are being raised. Oh, God, some of the women around Bea are being pulled back by what must be police, and it’s not just pulled back but pulled right down for they are on the floor, thick-coated men standing over them. A woman has her arms twisted behind her as she is being held down by one man while another wrestles to fit what must be a pair of handcuffs. In front of her another woman is shoved towards the ground, her body falls first against a neighbour’s and rests there for a short moment until a pair of thick tweed arms reaches out again and she is pulled down flat, as if ready for the world around to trample on her.

Bea feels an urge to grab at the coat of the man in front to bring him down too so that he knows what it feels like, so that he shares the same bruises as the woman he has, well, manhandled. Do you understand, Bea wants to shout, that it hurts?

Then Bea is moving again, the crowd at the top is pushing towards the house and she’s off downhill. She staggers and regains her balance as the wave of movement stops, leaving her crammed so tightly between strange coats that she can’t fall. However, the crowd is not going to be motionless for long and God knows where the next push will come from. Where is Celeste? Bea is both furious with her aunt and quite desperate to see her.

As Bea struggles to hold her place, she realises that she is no longer terrified, instead she is wide awake, buzzing almost. It is now as if she is in a new motor, rattling along flat out, knowing the
road will suddenly vanish into a bend ahead. Her breath shortens. She can no longer see the small figure in pale grey in front. No, there she is, her umbrella is up. My God, they’re trying to pull even her away. Bea tightens her hand around her own umbrella and pushes forward against the person in front – who steps away suddenly, and Bea is falling.

She braces herself for the pain of the impact, but instead a thick hand is tightening itself around her right arm, dragging her up and back. That’s it, then, she is being arrested; will he wait for both hands before the cuffs go on, or is it just one at a time? Then there will be a cell and bars, though it will be Celeste’s turn to be impressed if she knows Bea is there. But, God, how on earth will Celeste have a clue, and if she doesn’t fish Bea out of jail, then … what if the police keep her there all night? Bea starts to struggle.

‘Don’t be a fool.’ It’s more of a bark than a sentence, and the accent is thick.

The hand clamps tighter. Second charge against her, she thinks, resisting arrest.

‘Do you want me to let you go?’

Bea is now upright enough to twist her head around in the direction of her captor but only sees that there are no stripes on the cuff. Plain-clothes police, then. She does want him to let go, and she nods but he doesn’t relax his grip. So she shouts, perhaps more of a scream, though as she can’t face him, it is probably lost in the chaos around her. ‘At once! Let me go. Do you hear?’

The fist releases suddenly, and Bea trips but pulls herself upright. She is facing uphill and sees the crowd that is now a mob descending towards her at speed, behind them, a row of uniformed policemen.

‘Take my hand.’

Bea doesn’t move.

‘Take my hand.’ His voice is angrier, more urgent. Bea finds herself obeying and puts her hand in his, which envelops it, dwarfing her own.

He’s tugging her sideways, that’s all the space there is to squeeze through, and Bea twists her head up in his direction. The policeman is wearing a mackintosh and, even in the dark and the hurry, she can see that it looks as if it’s been slightly too pressed, perhaps starched by mistake, and then crumpled in parts. It’s February, he must be frozen, even his neck is bare, as are his hands. His grip tightens and she couldn’t escape even if she wanted to. He will surely arrest her when they reach the bottom of the square. There is a high-pitched scream to their right and Bea’s policeman glances in its direction. As he does so, Bea sees the shadow of a jaw straight as a girder. A fist would break on that.

Then they’re out at the bottom and he pulls her towards the garden square railings where he lets go of her hand and leans back against the iron. After a moment or two he nods towards the railings next to him. Then, head straight up, he turns to look at her, holding himself dead still. Now for the handcuffs, and if one is going to be arrested, it may as well be suffered with as much style as can be mustered. Bea pulls her chest up, pushes forward what her corsetière has managed to make the most of, and turns her face away, to look as uninterested as she can.

No handcuffs emerge. It occurs to Bea that he is perhaps not a policeman. She cannot see a great deal of him: his face isn’t shining in the lamplight and his eyes are hidden by the shadow of his bowler hat. Yet he somehow has a sense of, well, strength to him, and it is making Bea feel more than a little protected in this bedlam. Even if, dammit, his hands are in his pockets and he’s looking across the road, his interest elsewhere. How can he be so rude – and what is he looking at that is so much more interesting than her? Even given, she reflects, the state she must now be in.

Bea turns to follow the man’s gaze across Holland Park Avenue and then she’s back against the railings like lightning, putting herself right next to him and leaning as far back as she can to avoid a tornado of fists, legs and batons. At the front two or three policemen are carrying a small, inert figure wearing a black hat with a
large feather, and heavily veiled. For disguise, Bea guesses, little good that it did her. Bea blinks to keep away the tears. My God, she thinks, just one speech by this woman, a woman whom Bea has been brought up to believe is crazed, and Bea has fallen for her. Perhaps it was that Bea expected so little that it was easy to be impressed, or was she simply infected by the crowd around her? Even without all that, it is sad. To see any frail, brave person lose a fight is, well, sad.

The tornado is still whirling, Mrs Pankhurst’s bodyguard, and any others who might be caught in there, have not given up. One of the policemen at the front has lost his helmet and both police and women keep falling and hauling themselves up again. Another policeman staggers out of the fight towards Bea, one side of his face dripping with blood. She recoils further, into something soft, and jumps. It’s the man. She’s leant right against him and Bea feels her cheeks grow hot. What sort of woman will he think she is? Particularly as he wasn’t paying her a blind bit of notice beforehand. She may want his attention, indeed now that he has feigned indifference she needs it, but she would never behave like that, pushing herself up against a man. She’s forward again, quicker than she went back and now she’s standing two feet in front of the railings, her elbows squeezing her waist. She can’t turn around again now, not ever. Beatrice, my God, you’ve been embarrassed into being coy.

The whirligig has moved on down Holland Park Avenue.

‘Ladbroke Grove police station.’ He has at last spoken. How awkward. Does that mean she needs to reply? But he continues. ‘A couple of hundred yards down that road there.’ His voice is strange, not an accent she hears often but she does know it, or maybe it is him she knows. That would explain … but how, and where? She tries to think through her visits to friends’ houses, but really, her mind is too addled at present. In any case, this man is not a servant. Indeed, there is nothing whatsoever subservient about him.

Bea replies, ‘Do you think she can escape now?’

No answer comes. He’s looking straight across the road again, simply not bothering to speak. It was a silly question, but you can at least damn well give me an answer, she thinks. He really is ill mannered and blast being embarrassed, he may have dragged her out of a stampede but who does he think she is? Bea has never been shown so little respect before, well, perhaps a jostle in a street, being shouted at by a cart driver when she has rushed across his path, but not by someone she knows.

But she doesn’t know him, she doesn’t know him from Adam. It is the first time in her life that she has found herself standing with a man to whom she has not been introduced and, of course, out at night unchaperoned – if she is seen here, like this, then she will be assumed to … Good God, the thought of it. Thankfully, she will not ever have to see him again. She should go, she really should, but where is Celeste, and how is either of them ever to find the other in this mayhem? However, if Bea walks away from this man then she is obviously alone, and perhaps that is worse than being seen with him. At least she has some sort of explanation for standing here, in that she has been rescued, and if she waits just a little more, Celeste should emerge, Celeste must emerge, or even that woman wearing too much make-up. There is also, Bea thinks to herself, quite sharply, a chance that this man might at some point address me in reply.

People are dispersing, some hurrying away, others plodding a little, heads bowed with the loss of their leader. Bea looks around for Celeste. Those who remain are brushing themselves and others down or they are carrying bowls of water out of the house and washing the blood from faces. The street is littered with hats and helmets, umbrellas, batons, shreds of fabric, but no Celeste. With the realisation that she has been abandoned, Bea feels herself shrink to the size of that woman in grey. The lure of Mrs Pankhurst dulls; it has not been the perfect introduction to her aunt’s cause, and the sooner she’s at home the better. But how is she to take her leave of this man? She should thank him but it needs to be short and
brusque, and it would help if he were paying a jot of attention to her. She considers stepping on his foot – he’d have to turn towards her then.

Bea is coming to a decision that the foot-stepping is a viable way forward when a woman runs back into Holland Park Avenue from Ladbroke Grove and crosses the road to the remnants of the crowd. Her hat is gone, the pins have been pushed and pulled out of her hair and her clothes are torn and bloodstained.

‘It’s not her,’ she cries.

The reply comes back from the front of the house.

‘It was a decoy. Mrs Pankhurst left through the rear.’

‘Yes!’ Bea’s heart is knocking at her windpipe. Her cheeks are burning quite properly now. ‘Isn’t that capital news!’

Bea waits for a reply. If he doesn’t speak now then she’s off without another word. She’ll give him five, no, ten seconds.

‘Yes.’ Not an iota of excitement in it, just deadpan matter-of-fact as though what’s done is done and why should he, in particular, care? Barely audible, too, above the whoops and cheers of those still standing around embracing their neighbours. ‘I’m going home,’ she says.