Eden Falls (11 page)

‘Ask your mother, first of all, if she would come and speak with me. I can explain all.’ She had smiled at Eliza’s instant torrent of questions, and answered none of them.

‘
Silence, ma petite, c’est tout
,’ was all she had said. ‘Run away, shoo, shoo.’

So Eliza had left, and in her mind was a frenzy of possibilities. She was a fanciful girl, even without the promise of Parisian adventure; awake or asleep, her imagination ran riot, and at night her dreams were so crammed with incident that sometimes, when she woke, she had to lie stock still for five minutes to give the scenes in her mind time to fade and retreat. On the thrice-weekly train journeys to and from Barnsley she would rest her head on the window, close her eyes and let her thoughts carry her away – to centre stage, more often than not: Coppélia, Giselle, Odette on the London stage, before a rapt audience. Sometimes, if Eve had been working in the Barnsley shop, she would catch the same train home and Eliza would have to forgo the adulation of hundreds of ardent fans in order to answer her mam’s questions about school and what she’d had for dinner. This always felt like a sacrifice, though she bore it stoically.

This evening, though, she travelled alone. It was half past six by the time she got off the train at Netherwood Station, a quarter to seven when she walked into the house. Ellen was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, as if she’d been waiting for her sister to arrive, although she didn’t look up at Eliza but stared down at her own bare feet.

‘What’s up?’ Eliza said, because clearly something was. This was how Ellen communicated anxiety; she would place herself in the certain path of whomever she wished to confide in, and then let the truth be coaxed out of her.

‘Nowt,’ she said. She wiggled her toes. They were filthy, thought Eliza, mud stained.

‘Where’s Mam? She’ll flatten you when she sees your feet.’

Ellen shrugged. Eliza took off her hat and coat, and hung them on the hall stand. ‘Where’s Mam?’ she said again. It was quiet, at a time of day when ordinarily the house was full of activity. ‘What’s for tea?’

‘There is no tea,’ Ellen said, looking up now. Her eyes implored Eliza to share the burden she carried. ‘They’ve ’ad a barney.’

‘Who? Mam and Daniel?’

Ellen nodded. ‘Mam went upstairs and Daniel went outside. ’e banged t’door.’

Daniel didn’t bang doors. He didn’t shout or play merry hell like some of Eliza’s friends’ dads. She sat down next to Ellen.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘What was it about, anyway?’

Ellen shrugged again. ‘A letter, or summat. I was sent out, then got told off for listenin’ at t’door.’

‘Is Angus in?’

Ellen nodded. ‘Upstairs, playin’ trains.’

‘Well, what a carry on,’ said Eliza, feeling protected from these petty tribulations by her own glorious news. Ellen sniffed and looked doleful.

‘Come on,’ Eliza said. ‘I’ll make some toast and a pot o’ tea and take some up for Mam. It’ll all be right as rain by bedtime.’

Ellen, who had heard the worst of it, doubted this very much. But she followed Eliza, because there would be some semblance of normality if the kitchen smelled of toast and the kettle was whistling on the range.

A letter had come, from Seth:

Dear Mam,

I hope this finds you all well. I have been in Port Antonio now for nearly two months of the six that Uncle Silas intends for me, and already I have forgotten what it is to be cold. Even the wind and the rain here are warm.

However, the reason for my letter is not a happy one. Indeed, it is a matter of grave concern. The success of the Whittam Hotel is being jeopardised by the lazy, good-for-nothing staff that Uncle Silas is obliged to hire. Our English guests expect the standard of service that they enjoy in their own homes, and they find us sorely lacking. Our housekeeping staff are slapdash and lackadaisical, and our kitchen staff are idle and stupid. As a result our reputation is suffering, and the rival hotels – all of them American and all of them staffed by Americans – laugh openly at our difficulties. Often our guests leave the Whittam and go instead to the Mountain Spring or some such alternative. It is frustrating and humiliating, and it vexes me to see Uncle Silas, who has been so very good to me, being thwarted in all his efforts to succeed. For my part, I feel something akin to despair with each new day.

Mam, do you think you might come? I believe you could be the answer to all our difficulties. You have made such a wonderful success of your own business and I’m sure you could guide and inspire the Jamaican staff here to adopt your own rigorous professionalism.

I should add, of course, how much it would gladden my heart to see you again. I feel very far from my family. And this is a wonderful island, as abundant in fruit and blooms as one of Daniel’s hothouses at Netherwood Hall. You would be enchanted by it, I am sure.

I shall anxiously await your reply, and pray that it will be the one I long for.

Your loving son,

Seth

‘Silas wrote that,’ Daniel had said the moment Eve had finished reading it out loud to him. He had his arms folded and a look on his face that Eve recognised. It was the look he often wore when Silas was mentioned: sceptical and a little stony.

‘Now, why would you say that? It’s Seth’s hand, Seth’s signature.’

‘But not Seth’s words. Pass it here.’

Daniel reached for the letter and Eve hesitated, then gave it to him. Always she felt pushed into the role of sole defender of her brother’s honour. She had wondered herself, when she first read its content, whether the letter was entirely Seth’s work. He was a clever lad but unsophisticated, and some of the language seemed – what was the word? Ornate, perhaps: flowery. But Daniel had ignored that.

‘Listen,’ he had said. ‘“Lazy, good-for-nothing staff” – well that’s not like Seth. And, “our kitchen staff are idle and stupid” – that’s not like Seth either.’ He had put the letter down on the table and pushed it back at Eve. ‘He wouldn’t speak in those terms about people. Silas would, though. I’ve heard it often enough.’

‘So what’re you saying?’

‘As I said, Seth penned it, certainly, but I’d bet the shirt on my back that Silas dictated it to him.’

Eve looked at the letter again. She read it to herself, her lips moving silently.
Mam, do you think you might come … I feel very far from my family
. These phrases leapt out at her. She said, ‘You’re very quick to think the worst,’ and Daniel, who in truth was filled with panic at the thought she might go, replied, ‘I’ve learned that it’s the shortest route to the truth where your brother’s concerned.’

She looked at him. ‘That’s uncalled for.’ Angus, sitting on the floor with a tin train, looked up at the sharpness in her voice. ‘’e’s my brother.’

‘Just because he’s kin doesn’t mean he’s kind. You have a blind spot where he’s concerned, Eve. You see him differently from the rest of the world.’

He hadn’t raised his voice in the least. He spoke in reasonable tones. But nevertheless she felt under attack. She looked down at the letter rather than meet his eyes.
I feel something akin to despair with each new day
, she read. Angus stood and came to the table, holding the train. He rolled it along the surface hissing and puffing in his own approximation of a steam engine leaving a station.

‘Move your ’and, Pa, t’train’s coming,’ he said, and Daniel took his hand from the table and sat back in his chair, though he was still watching Eve.

‘If Seth needs me, I must go,’ she said.

‘It’s Silas who needs you. Will you cross the world for him?’ There was anger in his voice now. The tin train halted, and Angus stared at his pa.

‘If I write back with a refusal, what kind of mother does that make me?’

‘Eve, it’s not your mothering that’s in question. It’s Silas’s dubious morals, and not for the first time.’

‘Pa?’

‘Away upstairs, son,’ Daniel said. ‘Your mother and I need to talk.’

‘But I don’t want—’

‘Upstairs, Angus.’ This was Eve, and the boy stuck out his bottom lip, snatched up the train and cast each parent a reproachful look, but he went. He’d heard that note of warning in his mam’s voice before, and it was best heeded. He walked out of the kitchen, wilfully slowly, running the sharp, thin wheels of the train along the walls as he went. Anna had painted them blue when they had first moved in to Ravenscliffe, before Angus was born, before his mam and his pa were even married. Not bright blue or dark blue, but nice blue: his favourite colour of all the colours she’d put in this house. But he saw now that his train was leaving fine grey trails with its wheels, like the tracks that a real steam engine ran on. He risked a furtive glance at his mam; she hadn’t seen, or if she had she wasn’t interested. He slipped the train into the pocket of his shorts and left the room.

T
here were slogans chalked on the streets leading to Caxton Hall, and posters on the walls. Outside the hall a toothy young woman in a WPSU sash had rushed at Amos with a ‘Votes for Women’ badge. He’d said, ‘No thanks, flower,’ and earned himself a sharp poke in the back from Anna, who had taken the proffered badge and worn it herself. Amos was in a facetious frame of mind; had declared himself disappointed to have seen no one chained to a railing, had rolled his eyes derisively at the distinctive yellow Daimler – the Hoyland livery – parked outside the hall, and, finally inside, had pulled his cap down low, turned up the collar of his coat and arranged his features into an expression of sceptical amusement, in case anyone should spot him and mistake him for an acolyte.

The walls and balconies of the packed hall were hung with calico banners exhorting the faithful to action: ‘Deeds not Words’, and ‘Arise! Go Forth and Conquer!’ On the stage, a stern body of some fifty women sat in close rank.

‘Jury looks ’ard as nails,’ Amos said to Anna. ‘Wouldn’t fancy my chances there.’

She smirked. ‘They’d make mincemeat of you,’ she said, and then she nodded to a side door, through which three more women had just appeared. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Stars of the show.’

Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and Lady Henrietta Hoyland took their place on the stage, front and centre. Behind them the seated ranks rose and applauded, and the audience clapped too, though the detractors among them made themselves heard, whistling and catcalling, turning the tumultuous welcome into a discordant racket. Then Emmeline stepped forwards and, in a quiet and oddly religious gesture, raised her right arm, holding it horizontally before her with her palm down and fingers outstretched. Immediately, remarkably, the room fell silent, and without recourse to notes she began to speak. Christabel followed, then Henrietta, and with each change of speaker came an increase in moral outrage, a hotter, fiercer, bolder call to arms. Henrietta – golden, somehow, glowing with purpose – was the apotheosis of a steady climb in tempo and emotion as intentional and choreographed as an opera.

‘We wish to make the law, not break the law,’ she said, emphasising each phrase with a small punch in the air. ‘But break it we shall, if we must. There is no obstacle so great, no politician so implacable, no magistrate so harsh that our conviction will falter. We shall prevail, and our legacy will be a fairer, more democratic society. But we do not ask, as supplicants, humbly petitioning for favours. Instead, like warriors for justice, we demand!’

She paused here, basking in frenzied applause. Anna said, ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’

‘Too soon to tell,’ Amos replied. But he watched and listened to this daughter of the aristocracy, this sister of the Earl of Netherwood, and he could see that she knew how to win a crowd and, having won it, knew how to keep hold. There were plenty of men in the House of Commons who couldn’t do as much. He didn’t like her voice, though; those upper-class vowels stood for injustice, in Amos’s view. Nothing would alter that.

It confounded all Amos’s most cherished prejudices and preconceptions that Lady Henrietta Hoyland was a rabble-rousing, egg-throwing suffragette. Anna enjoyed his discomfiture and took every opportunity to make him face facts.

‘Lady Henrietta was apprehended again last night,’ she would say from behind her newspaper. ‘Another night in a Bow Street cell.’ Or, ‘Lady Henrietta addressed a rally in Hyde Park, it says here, and your Mr Hardie was on the platform with her.’

Amos took the point well enough: not all aristocrats were complacent ninnies. But most of them were, of this he was sure. And just because Lady Henrietta had made a name for herself in the WPSU, which counted Keir Hardie among its supporters, it didn’t make Amos a fan, nor did it make her a socialist. Just this week the papers had reported that she’d donated nearly five hundred pounds to buy a new car for the cause, and a further two hundred and fifty for a chauffeur and running costs. Amos was disparaging.

‘What kind of cockeyed logic is that?’ he said to Anna. ‘Cars and chauffeurs! Is that Lady ’enrietta’s contribution to social justice – luxury trappings for t’Pankhursts?’

‘It’s just one of Lady Henrietta’s contributions to the Women’s Political and Social Union,’ said Anna. ‘And it’s the least of them, as you well know.’

He did, too: could hardly fail to, since her activities were followed slavishly by the newspapermen, intrigued by this highborn combatant in the fight for women’s suffrage. Her presence on a platform with the Pankhursts was a draw to the crowds and to the journalists, although her novelty value was nothing compared to the passion of her rhetoric and her devastating way with hecklers. Anna knew her, of course. Henrietta was sister-in-law to Thea Hoyland, and Thea Hoyland had given Anna her first professional commission three years previously. It was Thea who had begun the flow of enquiries from her titled friends; a flow of enquiries that had yet to cease, and that Amos, try as he might to accept it, would have dearly loved to staunch.

But Anna, who would only judge as she found, liked Lady Henrietta, and she was sure that if Amos would but take off his blinkers, he would like her too. This was why she had coaxed him into accompanying her to Caxton Hall and he’d agreed, though only in the interests of domestic harmony. He had no intention of taking off his blinkers, in fact. His blinkers, he told Anna, had got him elected as a Labour MP; his blinkers kept his eyes on the goal and prevented him being distracted by other, marginal issues. He knew very well what the demands of the suffragists and suffragettes were, and while he could absolutely see their point, there were many other higher priorities on Amos’s list of matters pending than whether a select group of educated, wealthy women won the right to vote.