Break of Dawn (25 page)

He had killed all love within her, for nothing could survive the things he’d said and done, still said and did, but each time she told herself she couldn’t go on, there would be another agonising night where he became a petrified child. And it was the child she couldn’t abandon, not the man.

She began walking again, clearing her mind of her own problems and letting the first mild weather of the year caress her skin. She could have taken a cab to the meeting but she had wanted to walk in the sunshine along the streets, a chance to feel like any other woman, someone with a normal existence and a happy home life.

She didn’t glance at the couple making their way down the steps
of a small hotel to her right; the lovely weather had brought the world and his wife out and the pavements were bustling with Londoners. Since she had become a success, Sophy had found that fame could be a two-edged sword on occasion, so if she ever took a walk alone – which was rare – she tended to keep her head down and walk swiftly, thereby remaining largely unnoticed by her fans. So when her arm was grabbed, and a voice in her ear said, ‘Sophy? It
is
you, isn’t it?’ she was taken aback, the more so when she saw who had accosted her.

‘Patience?’ She stared at the woman who was Patience and yet not Patience.

‘Yes, it’s me.’ Patience was holding on to her as though she was afraid Sophy would disappear if she let go of her arm. ‘Oh, Sophy, I can’t believe it’s you! I’ve longed to see you again. Thank you for your letters. Father passes them on to me and it’s been good to know you are all right.’

Sophy didn’t know what to say. For one thing this Patience, with her bright face and sparkling eyes, was as different to the girl she’d known as chalk to cheese. For another, she had always felt a little guilty about the letters – not only their infrequency, since she had only written five or six in the years since she had left the northeast, but also the fact that she had never given a return address. Her mind caught at Patience’s last words. ‘You’re not living at the vicarage then?’

‘No, no. I left there about eighteen months after you had gone, to train as a nurse.’ Patience now blushed, turning to the tall, rather distinguished-looking gentleman at her side. ‘This is my husband, Dr Aldridge. William, this is my dear cousin, Sophy Shawe. You did say your husband’s name is Shawe when you wrote to say you had got married?’

Sophy nodded, smiling as she took the doctor’s outstretched hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Dr Aldridge.’

‘William, please.’

Sophy liked Patience’s husband immediately. His handshake was firm, his brown eyes were warm with a twinkle in their depths and his smile was open and friendly.

Still reeling mentally from the shock of discovering that Patience was not only married but had left the vicarage years ago to enter the nursing profession, Sophy stared at her cousin. She could see where the transformation had occurred now. For the first time in her life Patience looked happy. ‘Do you live in London now, or are you visiting?’

‘Oh, only visiting. It’s our wedding anniversary. We’ve been married two years this week, and as Florence Nightingale is having the Freedom of the City conferred on her on Monday, we thought we’d spend a few days here and try to catch a glimpse of her. She’s such a wonderful woman and absolutely amazing for eighty-seven years old.’

Sophy nodded. ‘Are you still working as a nurse?’

‘Of course.’ Patience glanced up at her husband with adoring eyes. ‘William has no problem with me continuing with my career even though it does sometimes mean we’re ships that pass in the night. William’s a paediatrician at the same hospital and with night duty and such . . .’ She shrugged. ‘But we get by, don’t we, William?’

‘Splendidly, most of the time.’ William smiled, and there was no doubt he doted on his wife.

‘I don’t suppose . . .’ Patience hesitated. ‘You wouldn’t like to have dinner with us one night? You and your husband? We leave London on Tuesday morning and it would be so nice to catch up a little. John and Matthew are both married now, you know, and John is the father of one-year-old twin boys.’

Sophy didn’t know how to reply. Part of her was glad to see Patience, and the other part of her wanted to take to her heels and run. With an effort she pulled herself together and injected warmth into her voice when she said, ‘I’m sorry, Patience, but dinner’s not possible as I’m on stage each evening, and furthermore, Toby is . . . is unwell.’ Seeing the disappointment in her cousin’s face, she added quickly, ‘But we could meet for lunch if you like, the three of us?’

Patience’s face lit up. ‘Really? That would be lovely. Come and join us at the hotel then. Shall we say tomorrow at twelve o’clock? Does that suit?’

Sophy nodded. ‘Tomorrow it is.’ She turned to Patience’s husband again and extended her hand, saying, ‘It’s been lovely to meet you, William,’ but before she could make her goodbyes to Patience, her cousin was hugging her tight, murmuring, ‘You won’t change your mind, will you? You will come?’

‘Of course I’ll come.’ Even as she said it she was reflecting that Patience knew her better than she knew herself.

The suffragette meeting was more harrowing than Sophy expected, revealing, as it did, an inside view of the horrors of prison life. Emmeline Pankhurst’s vivid account of the drudgery and misery of her imprisonment was harrowing. The meagre rations, the coarse, scratchy clothing with its convict’s arrows, the dismal surroundings and the desperate unhappiness of her fellow inmates was compelling hearing, and it was hard to acquaint such dreadful happenings with the beautifully dressed and aristocratic-looking woman talking to the large crowd that had come to see her.

‘All the hours seem very long in that place,’ Mrs Pankhurst said calmly, her perfectly pitched voice carrying to the back of the hall where the meeting was being held. ‘The sun can never get in, and every day is changeless and uninteresting. Within a very short time one grows too tired to go through to the exercise yard and take the air, even though the yearning for the smell and feel of the outside world is paramount.’

‘And what was her heinous crime?’ Cat whispered at the side of Sophy. ‘Conducting a peaceful march through the streets of London, that’s all. Like she said in court, the disturbance that developed was the fault of the authorities who’d instructed the police to use strong measures. Mounted police riding into the march to break it up, I ask you! Women were knocked down and bruised and their clothes torn, and that lasted for five hours. There’s Finland giving women seats in the Finnish Parliament this year, and here we have the Prime Minister saying we have to be patient and wait rather than act in a pugnacious spirit! Women have been waiting for decades and where’s it got us? Nowhere, that’s where.’

‘You don’t actually have to convince me,’ Sophy whispered back. ‘I’m a woman, I’m on your side, remember?’

Cat giggled. ‘Just checking.’

They left the hall to find the weather had changed dramatically during the two hours the meeting had been in progress. The sky was overcast and grey, and a cold drizzle was misting the streets. There had been the usual number of hecklers and ne’er-do-wells inside the hall – men who favoured the MP who had openly declared two or three years ago that ‘men and women differed in mental equipment, with women having little sense of proportion, and giving women the vote would not be safe’. One or two of the more unpleasant types a meeting such as the one today always seemed to attract eyed Sophy and Cat as the two women hugged on the steps of the building.

‘Let me give you a lift back to your lodgings,’ Sophy urged Cat, having decided to take a cab home in view of the weather. ‘It’s beginning to rain quite hard now.’

‘No need. I’m going straight to the theatre – it’s only a street or two away, so it makes sense. I’ll buy something to eat before I go in, as I’ve got a matinée and I’ll be cutting it fine if I go home first.’ Cat smiled at her, pulling her felt hat further over her head and opening her umbrella. ‘What did you think of Mrs Pankhurst?’

‘She’s an amazing woman.’

‘I know. Promise me that somehow you’ll come and see the play I’m doing at the moment. It’s Elizabeth Robins’ second work and it’s sheer propaganda for the Cause, which is wonderful. It finishes with a suffragette rally in Trafalgar Square, and the political speeches are tremendous. We regularly have one or two men escorted from the premises in the evening when they’ve had a few drinks, and there’s a number who are barred from the theatre now because of their obnoxious behaviour. They only come to disrupt the performance but it doesn’t work. Everyone’s all the more determined to see it through and make the point.’

Cat was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and clearly pleased with herself, but Sophy felt a stab of unease. ‘Have you ever been threatened personally?’

‘We all have,’ Cat said airily, giving Sophy another hug before turning and saying over her shoulder, ‘I’ll see you at Dolly’s on Saturday morning. You haven’t forgotten it’s her birthday?’

‘Cat, please let me give you a lift to the theatre,’ Sophy called after her friend as she began to walk away.

‘No need,’ Cat said again, raising her hand without turning round. ‘See you at the weekend.’

Sophy stood hesitating for a moment or two before hailing a cab. The meeting had been held in a hall off Ludgate Hill near St Paul’s Cathedral, and she knew Cat’s theatre, a tiny one in compari son to the West End giants, was only a short distance away by foot. Nevertheless, as she sat back in the cab and settled her damp skirt about her legs, she wished Cat had agreed to ride with her.

Quite when Cat became aware of the footsteps behind her she wasn’t sure. There were a few people about although the rain had driven some folk indoors and it wasn’t as busy as when she’d walked to the hall from her lodgings earlier. She had kept glancing over her shoulder then, feeling she was being followed, but the amount of people on the pavements had made it impossible to be sure. She had told herself that the vile letters she had received from someone who called himself ‘A devotee of your art’ had made her uneasy and that she was imagining things, but now the feeling was stronger than ever and the hairs on the back of her neck were prickling.

She had turned off Ludgate Hill into one of the side roads leading down to Queen Victoria Street, and had just reached the back of a printing works which was probably midway between the two main streets, when she was grabbed from behind by one of the two rough-looking men she thought she’d glimpsed at the hall that morning. Lifted right off her feet and with a large hard hand across her mouth, she was held against the man’s front as he carried her into the narrow alleyway at the side of the building which appeared to have a dead end, his companion following him. She kicked and struggled but it had no impact on the burly body.

‘Calm down, calm down.’ The man holding her spoke above her
head. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you, that’s all. Seems you didn’t reply to his letters, even though he asked you to reply in the Agony Column of
The Times
. Not polite, that. Ignoring him. Upset him, it has. Especially with how you flaunt yourself on stage, saying women should be able to choose where they give their favours and that you’re as good as men. Little tease, aren’t you, an’ you’ve excited him, see?’

Fear was making Cat light-headed. Her feet still weren’t touching the ground, and he was holding her as casually as though she weighed nothing at all, the other man not looking at them but peering towards where they’d entered the alley.

The man holding her now said, ‘You told him where we’d be? That we’d have her?’

The second man grunted a reply, and then, as the clip-clop of horses’ hooves came to them, Cat gathered all her strength and kicked out viciously with her boots at the same time as twisting her body.

She almost got free and she knew she’d hurt her captor from the groan he made, but as she opened her mouth to scream, the hand clamped even more firmly across her mouth. He was muttering foul curses as he carried her to the end of the alley and thrust her into the open door of the carriage that was waiting. She sprawled on the floor, but as she tried to scramble towards the opposite door, the man climbed in beside her and hoisted her up none too gently.

‘Gently, Charley, gently. Is that any way to treat a lady?’

The man sitting in the seat facing her was clothed all in black; black frockcoat, black trousers and a black top hat. Cat was now frozen with terror, and although her mouth was free she couldn’t cry out or move. Not that she would have got very far with the two men who had accosted her now sitting either side of her.

‘But we haven’t been formally introduced, my dear.’ The man leaned forward and Cat instinctively shrank from what she saw in his face. ‘My name is Henry, and yours is Christabel. Such a very beautiful name.’

The carriage was moving but the curtains at the windows made
it impossible to see out. That alone increased Cat’s dread. It was inconceivable that she was being abducted in the middle of a normal working day, but it was happening, and no one would know.

Somehow she found her voice. ‘Stop this carriage this instant.’

‘Why should I do that?’ The man leaned back again, the slender walking stick with a silver top he was holding resting between his knees. ‘I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to talk to you for some time. It’s unfortunate it had to be this way but you’ve only brought it on yourself, my dear, ignoring my letters and requests that we meet.’

She knew but she still had to ask. ‘Letters?’

‘“A devotee of your art”?’

Oh God help me, help me, help me.
Those disgusting letters detailing what he wanted to do to her, the ‘fun’ they could have. ‘They were not the sort of letters a gentleman sends to a lady,’ she said, aiming to keep the trembling in her body out of her voice.

‘On the contrary, a lady of your profession must receive such accolades all the time, surely?’

‘They weren’t in the nature of an accolade, they were offensive and detestable.’

‘They were a compliment, my dear. To your beauty and the free spirit you talk about on stage. You are magnificent in your unrestraint, your shamelessness.’