Give Us This Day (62 page)

“Thank you, George. I’d be very grateful. There’s at least a chance that way.”

“She’s that badly hurt?”

“A fractured skull, so the surgeon said. She’s not regained consciousness.”

“Leave it to me. Go straight back to the hospital. And Debbie…!”

“Yes?”

“Don’t even try to notify the old people. They can’t do anything to help, or not yet, and remember the Gov’nor is over eighty.”

“Very well, George. I’ll be here if I’m not at the hospital. They might not let me stay… there may be no point in staying anyway. You’d handle Giles better than any of us.”

“Not better than you, Debbie. But I’d waste time coming to pick you up.”

He replaced the receiver and stood thinking, holding the full import of her message at bay while he grappled with the practical aspects of a night journey by road to Wales. They could get a powerful motor somewhere. Edward would know where, and it would take them the better part of the night to reach the valleys. If they were lucky, and found Giles, they could refuel at the Cardiff depot and make a dash for London. But even if they encountered fair weather, unlikely at this time of year, they would be lucky to reach London before dusk. For a moment he toyed with the idea of going over Debbie’s head and trying his luck with the Cardiff police, but he thought better of it. Giles was probably a marked man in that part of Wales, torn by strikes and political dissension. His wife, with gaol sentences behind her and the current one hanging over her head under the “Cat and Mouse” Act, whereby suffragettes on hunger strikes were released and re-arrested, was not likely to engage much official sympathy. It was better, in the circumstances, to rely on Edward’s local contacts and his own ingenuity.

He knocked on Edward’s door and, getting no answer, went in, finding his brother heavily asleep. He would have preferred to leave him sleeping and shift for himself, but that wasn’t possible. He needed Edward’s local knowledge if he was to get hold of motor transport at this time of night.

He shook his brother awake. “Sorry, old son, but I’m off my own patch and badly need your help. Who do you know around here who would be likely to lend or hire us a Daimler, or some motor with that kind of performance?”

Edward said, rubbing his eyes, “Grayson, the big brewer, has a Panhard. He’s an old customer. So is Sir Alec Gratwick, the draper. He runs one of those new Silver Ghosts. It’s a corker. But what’s happened? What do you want with a car?”

“I’ll tell you later. How friendly are you with Grayson?”

“Not very. I know Sir Alec rather better.”

“He’s in politics, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He’ll be the next mayor.”

“Liberal or Tory?”

“Liberal. Rabid. He stood for a local Parliamentary seat last election.”

“Then he’s our man. Would your association with him stand for rousting him out and asking a favour of this kind?”

“If it was important. He’s a good sort and has been on our books since the Gov’nor’s day.”

“Then take me to him and leave me to do the explaining. I’ll tell you as we go along.”

2

The demonstration had the makings of a fiasco from the outset. The opposition in Trafalgar Square had been exceptionally noisy and abusive, and even Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs. Pankhurst’s daughter, had been unable to get a hearing. It came on to drizzle as they formed up at the top of Whitehall, flanked, as always, by police, mounted and afoot. The police seemed to be in a neutral mood today, trudging along with bored expressions and fulfilling their invidious role as a shield against the rowdiest elements of the crowd, who followed the line of march closely, eddying from pavements to carriageway and sometimes getting close enough to jostle.

Before they had passed the Horse Guards, Romayne realised how mistaken she had been in parading and volunteering to carry a banner. She badly needed rest. Three days out of Holloway, following eight on a hunger strike, wasn’t a long enough interval to recuperate, much less to march, and the banner, heavy with rain, was a terrible burden. At the House, when Christabel was due to speak again, she would have to surrender it to someone, but in the meantime she thought she could manage, providing there were no mêlées. In the course of their shuffling progress to a point level with Downing Street, she had a chance to look about her, peering closely at the cavorting bully-boys and asking herself yet again what it was that made them care enough to turn out on a rainy Saturday afternoon in order to abuse a few hundred women waging a lopsided war on a Government that called itself “Liberal” and had proved, against all predictions, more implacable than its predecessors up to the landslide in 1906. It could not be fear, that she supposed accounted for most of the world’s cruelty. Or envy, that accounted for the rest. It was probably no more than a mild revolt against the boredom and pinchpenny economy of their own lives, for most of the men in the crowd looked like mechanics or labourers, cloth-capped in the main and half-tipsy probably, seeing that it was payday for the majority.

The street sign at Downing Street reminded her of earlier, happier days of the crusade, when she and Debbie had earned their first arrest and spent their first fortnight in Holloway. That was getting on five years ago now, and she had been inside three times since then and twice subjected to forcible feeding before someone thought up that diabolical “Cat and Mouse” scheme, a method of prolonging the agony capable of converting a dedicated campaigner into a morose fanatic. She had not reached that point yet but she was nearing it, her entire being rebelling against the demands made upon her physical resources over the last few months; and again she thought of her stupid rejection of the offer to go down to Lynmouth, where the W.S.P.U. ran a rest home for released hunger-strikers. In her present condition she wasn’t much use to the cause, dragged down by this terrible yearning for sleep and stillness, for the predictability of a humdrum day in her own home, with the children and Giles if he could spare time to comfort and counsel her.

He would have counselled her now, no doubt, and extricated her from this untidy scrimmage, hailing a cab probably, and cheering her with news of progress on other fronts, but he had been away in Wales when she emerged, unexpectedly, on the eighth day of her twenty-eight day sentence. She realised that he had troubles enough of his own, with the valleys in revolt, a lockout at the mines, and money to be raised for families who were pawning bedclothes in mid-winter to fortify their bellies against another week without wages.

She envied him his inner serenity, his ability, acquired little by little over the embattled years, to absorb the trials and tribulations of so many, allotting each its proper place in a scale of priorities. She envied him his resilience, too, and the dynamo of nervous energy that enabled him to move through a working day that would have prostrated more robust men. He had the knack, that so few of the militants seemed to acquire, of isolating injustices like microbes under glass and studying each objectively before deciding how to deal with it. But when the moment came there was never a time when his coolness deserted him, and he was tempted to abandon one plan in favour of another promising more spectacular results, a very common failing among crusaders.

Someone in the crowd threw an egg that struck the banner pole just above her head and spattered the shoulders of the woman in the rank ahead. The procession halted for a moment, closing up from behind; while she waited, resting the butt of the pole on the road, the remaining traces of the egg slipped down the pole and over her fingers, sliming them and making the pole difficult to grasp. The yearning for sleep made her senses reel and the shouts of the crowd, apparently blocking the march ahead and being broken up by mounted police, merged into a long, incessant roar so that she thought, distractedly, I’m going t
o faint, and I mustn’t faint here in full view of these louts. I must find Debbie and tell her to take my place for a spell, but how can I do that without abandoning this greasy pole…? And then, as though boosted from the direction of Trafalgar Square b
y a strong wind, the ranks behind her began pushing forward; the woman ahead remained stationary, so that the section in which she was marshalled split and spilled sideways on to the pavement, the column losing cohesion as the banner was torn from her grasp. A bellowing policeman cantered past and she dodged to one side, brushing a lamp-standard with her shoulder. Behind it, leering at her like a centaur, was a fat middle-aged man with beery breath and heavy blue jowls singing snatches of the music-hall song, “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” and beating out the time with his furled umbrella.

Then a fresh thrust from behind flung her forward into his outstretched arms, and the whiff of his breath was so pungent and putrid that she retched. All the time he kept chanting, “Ta-ra-ra-BOOM-de-ay!” even when he lost balance and they rolled together in the gutter.

When she rose to her knees he had disappeared in a swirl of legs, and she crouched there close against the lamp-standard, shaking her head to and fro. Her unpinned hair fell across her eyes, and the sour smell of her own vomit reminded her of the cell in Holloway, where the little Scots doctor, with desperate patience trying to insert the feeding tube between her clenched teeth, kept repeating, “Awa’, lassie! Dinnae mak’ me do it… Dinna mak’ me…” She lost all sense of time and place and became isolated from the chaos all about her.

The two-horse van appeared out of nowhere, running wild and free it seemed, so that she half rose to her feet and tried to ward off the goring butt of its shaft with both hands. It bore down on her inexorably, however, and she had an impression of being lifted as upon a wave and tossed the full width of the pavement. And after that the sustained roar of breakers on a rockbound coast dinned in her ears, and Giles’s sunburned face peered down at her from the bridge arching the river Gladwyn near their old home in Caernarvonshire.

He looked so much younger than of late. No more than a youth, and he had a pack on his back that he jettisoned to climb down to where she stood waist deep in the shallow water. She was aware of the terrible importance of touching his hand and this she succeeded in doing, but only just, so that she had to scrabble with her toes to reach the level of the road. But when she got there it wasn’t a road, only that long, bare dormitory of the emporium in the north where she had once lived the life of a shopgirl drudge. And then the scene changed again and they were in the bedroom of their little stone house on the side of the hill at Pontnewydd, where their life began all over again in a spirit of tender camaraderie that was startlingly new in their marriage. And suddenly she felt glad and free and at peace with the world, smiling and enfolding him, pressing him close and assuring him over and over that this would be different for both of them and that here, in this drab little room with its faded wallpaper, she would conceive his child. The sound of the breakers assailed her again then, louder and terribly insistent, so that she held him with all her strength; presently a wave broke over them both completely submerging them. But when it receded, she still had him close against her breast.

3

They got him there just as dusk was creeping up river and the lights of the Embankment were winking like a vast necklace lit by a moving candle against a background of murk. They were all three chilled to the bone, despite heavy coats and muffiers; both George and Edward tried hard to persuade him to get a hot drink inside him before he went in, but he shook his head.

“No, George. Go on home and take Edward with you. You’ve done enough for me, and I’ll never forget it,” so they left him and drove the borrowed Silver Ghost over the bridge and down Whitehall to the Strand. George said, glumly, “By God, I need a stiff one. Let’s stop at the Savoy and give her a chance to cool off.”

* * *

Giles went in to the lobby and here Deborah claimed him, breaking away from a nurse and saying, fervently, “Thank God you’re here! She’s been conscious but only for a moment… long enough to ask…” She piloted him into a waitingroom being vacated by the last of the Sunday visitors and heavy with the scent of chrysanthemums.

“Is there any chance at all, Debbie?”

She lowered her glance so he went on, with surprising calmness, “You were on the march? You must have seen what happened?”

“Not really. I was away up at the front. The mob surged on to the road and cut the column in half. Romayne was further back, carrying a banner. Sit down a minute. You’ll be able to see her but you have to know, you have to understand first.”

He sat on a long wooden bench, drawing off his gloves, and slowly chafing his numbed hands. “I was at Tonypandy. They’re in a bad way down there.”

“We’re all in a bad way,” she said, bitterly. “What makes us think we’re unique as a nation, when things like this keep on happening? Romayne was a fighter, Giles. She could have taken the rest-cure in Devon, with all the others who were turned loose, but when she heard Christabel needed backing for the rally she insisted on coming along. Don’t blame yourself for not being here. This is a war on so many fronts.”

She told him how the march had attracted the usual horde of layabouts, all looking for a wet Saturday afternoon’s diversion. “It’s the papers I blame. They keep whipping them on like a lot of foxhounds. The police were fair—they did what they could, but there wasn’t nearly enough of them. They broke up the procession opposite Downing Street, and the van that knocked her down was a Black Maria, moving in to pick up the rowdies.”

“How bad are her injuries, Debbie?”

“Spinal, and a suspected fractured skull. But they’re not absolutely sure yet.”

A young doctor approached and conducted them wordlessly through a maze of corridors to a ward containing about forty beds. There were screens around most of them, so that he assumed the patients here were all on the danger list. Nurses swished to and fro, absorbed in their own business. Lights burned low and from all around rose a low, persistent murmur of distracted protest. He thought, It can’t be right for people to die without privacy. These places nee
d looking to, like every other institution in the damned country… If she holds on, I’ll get her out of here somehow… And then a sister, distinguished by her dark blu
e overall and small coif, came up and said, “She’s conscious intermittently, Mr. Swann, but don’t stay more than a moment. Don’t talk either and only one of you, please.”