Octavia (7 page)

‘Just stunned, I think,’ Betty said. ‘They knocked me off my feet. Can you see my hat?’

It was yards away and trodden flat, lying on the pavement next to a woman who was sitting propped up against the railings holding a bloodstained handkerchief to her temples. ‘I’ve got a bit of a cut,’ she said, when Octavia asked her how she was and lifted the handkerchief to reveal it.

It was a deep cut and would obviously need stitches. ‘Is there anyone with you?’ Octavia asked. ‘You ought to get home and call the doctor.’

‘I came with Clara,’ the woman said, ‘but I don’t know where she is.’ And she began to cry.

‘Don’t worry,’ Octavia said. ‘We’ll find her for you, won’t we, Betty?’

Which, rather amazingly, they did, by dint of calling her name extremely loudly and over and over again until she appeared. She was profoundly shocked to see the state her friend was in and kept saying she didn’t know what the world was coming to, and what were they to do? But by this time Octavia had already decided what they were to do and was calling for a cab. She found one standing by the kerb a few yards back along the road. The driver was surly and said he didn’t want ‘no bleedin’ women’ in his nice clean vehicle, but he relented when Octavia told him she would pay him double, and Clara and her injured friend climbed unsteadily aboard.

By that time the horses had gone clopping off towards Parliament Square and Octavia had gathered a group of women around her and taken command. ‘None of us are hurt,’ she said, ‘or not hurt much and the horses have gone, which is a blessing. I think we ought to go on with the march and try and get into the House, the way we planned.’

Some were unsure of the wisdom of such a plan – ‘What if they charge at us again?’ – but most agreed with her. So they set off for the second time that evening, without their banner and their leaders and walking on the pavement this time because they thought the road was too dangerous. At least the gas lamps had been lit and there was no sign of the police.

But in Parliament Square their way was barred by a line of
horses and there was no way they could push past such a determined barrier. ‘We’ll wait until we hear some news,’ Octavia said. ‘There’s no sign of Christabel or any of the others, so they’ve either got in or been arrested. Someone will come out again sooner or later and we’ll ask them.’

The person who came out nearly an hour later was a reporter with a notebook in his hand. He’d got his story and didn’t mind telling them what he knew, even though the nearest policeman was glowering at him. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they got to the Strangers’ Gallery.’

‘How many?’

‘About fifteen as far as I could see. Anyway, they were all arrested. Appearing at Bow Street tomorrow morning.’

The thought of being arrested made several women shiver.

‘What shall we do now?’

‘We will go home,’ Octavia said, ‘and patch ourselves up and be at Bow Street in the morning.’ She was putting on a brave face but she suddenly felt cold and tired. It had been a dreadful evening. ‘I’ll see you to your door,’ she said to Betty, ‘because your house is nearest.’

‘Will you be all right going back on your own?’ Betty worried.

‘I shall be fine,’ Octavia said. But it was a lie.

By the time she reached her doorstep she was shaking with fatigue and delayed shock. It was all she could do to put her key in the lock and when she’d staggered into the sitting room she simply sank into the nearest chair and covered her face with her hands.

Amy was aghast. ‘My dear child!’ she said, rushing to her daughter’s side. ‘What have they done to you? Ring for Mrs Wilkins, J-J. She’s been hurt.’

Octavia wanted to reassure her but for the moment she was too exhausted to speak and simply sat where she was while her mother swept into action, dispatching Mrs Wilkins to the kitchen for hot water, cotton wool and lint and Mr Wilkins to the chemist for witch hazel. She held out her hands and lifted her arms obediently so that her mother could ease her out of her gloves and remove her muddy coat and skirt; she allowed herself to be wrapped in a blanket and sat by the fire; she watched as her grazes were bathed and bandaged but for the moment conversation was impossible.

After the cold and terror of Victoria Street, the sitting room was as warm as a womb, enclosed, containing and protective, the red velvet curtains drawn against the night, their three easy chairs set around the hearth in a semicircle, dappled by firelight. Shadows flickered across Mr Morris’s elaborate wallpaper, the gaslights popped and fluttered, and everything in the room was gilded by firelight. The brass fire irons gleamed as the flames leapt in the grate and above them on the mantelpiece the looking glass reflected light like water, the clock face was a golden disc, the lustres flashed blue and green fire like elongated diamonds. Octavia relaxed into the familiar ease of it. She was here in this still, peaceful room, being loved and cared for and that was enough. She would tell them what had happened in the morning.

‘It beggars belief,’ Amy said, when she’d heard the story. ‘Whatever were they thinking of to treat you so?’

‘We were the enemy,’ Octavia told her sadly, ‘and they were the cavalry. They were attacking us. Obeying orders. It’s a war, Mama.’

‘It’s monstrous,’ her mother said, pouring the tea. ‘Grown men on horseback riding into defenceless women. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, I really don’t. Now then, my dear, eat up your breakfast while it’s hot and then you must get back to bed. You’re in no condition to go to college.’

‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ Octavia said. ‘I can’t do that. I’ve got to go to court. I want to be there at the trial.’

Amy turned to her husband for support. ‘J-J,’ she said. ‘You must speak to her. She’s in no fit state to go out.’

J-J had been stroking his beard for comfort while he listened to his daughter’s story. Now he gave it one last tug and smiled at them both, looking from one to the other, at Tavy, pale and determined, with her mouth set and her face bruised and that frizz of pale ginger hair spreading like a halo, and at Amy, who looked even more determined and was sending him eye messages begging his support. She looks so frail, he thought. Her hands were too thin and her hair too pale, with that odd salt and pepper greyness that redheads so often produce as they age. And she
was
ageing. He had to admit it. At fifty-two she was no longer the elegant woman he’d loved for so long. Since that last bout of bronchitis last spring, she’d taken to wearing a shawl round her shoulders and seemed to stoop even when she was sitting down. It made him love her more protectively than ever. But he couldn’t take her part, even so.

‘I think, my dear,’ he said, ‘we must allow our Tavy to make her own decisions.’

‘And what if she gets hurt?’

‘She has been hurt already, my love,’ he said mildly, ‘and acquitted herself quite splendidly in very difficult circumstances. I do not think we need to worry on her
account this morning. There is unlikely to be a cavalry charge in a court of law. The judge would forbid it.’

‘Yes, but what if she were?’ Amy insisted. ‘How would we know? We could be sitting here worrying for hours, not knowing. Oh, if only we had a telephone, J-J. Then she could phone us and let us know.’ She’d been hinting that they needed a telephone for weeks and weeks, ever since Maud and Ralph had had one installed.

J-J recognised that she was offering him a bargain. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If we agree that it is right and proper that Tavy should go to Bow Street, as I truly believe it is, then I will buy a telephone.’

So Octavia dressed in a quiet costume, chose a sober hat and went to support her heroines.

The courtroom was full by the time she and Betty Transom arrived so they had to wait outside on the pavement. But the police were no trouble that morning. They merely stood and watched, occasionally walking up and down like guardsmen, occasionally making a pretence of keeping the pavement cleared for passers-by. And after a long, chilly wait the court began to empty and a crowd of women emerged, among them Mrs Emsworth, who walked across to tell them that all the defendants had been sent to prison – ‘mostly six weeks but Christabel got three months’ – and that the Black Marias would be coming through at any minute. There was nothing more to be done except cheer the vans as they passed and hope that their imprisoned passengers could hear what was being shouted. ‘God bless you!’ they called. ‘Votes for women!’ ‘The fight goes on!’

‘They needn’t think being sent to prison will stop us,’ Mrs
Emsworth said trenchantly as the vans were driven away. ‘It will only make us more determined.’

Betty and Octavia agreed with her wholeheartedly. Oh, it was a joy to be among such passion and purpose.

The telephone was installed two weeks later and one of the first things J-J did was to use it to arrange a dinner party for his Fabian friends.

‘And this time you must join us, my dear,’ he said to Octavia. ‘Edith Nesbit will be here and she particularly asked how you were.’

‘Covered in bruises,’ Octavia said, grimacing, ‘that’s how I am. Not a pretty sight for anyone to see.’

‘But an honourable one,’ her father told her. ‘Wounded for the cause.’

So she wore her bruises with pride and joined the party. And was praised for her courage by everyone around the table, and commended for her cool-headedness, which her father had described to them in restrained and admiring detail.

‘Mrs Pankhurst has written to us from prison,’ Edith Nesbit told them. ‘We shall be printing the letter in full in our next issue. Although I should warn you, it makes grim reading. Conditions there are truly dreadful.’

Octavia read the letter with mixed feelings: enormous pride that her heroines were willingly suffering such hardships, and admiration for their endurance and courage. But sneaking in among these noble feelings there was a shrinking sense that sooner or later she too would have to break the law. Her conscience was too finely tuned to allow her to stand by and
do nothing forever. And when she did, she too would be sent to prison, she too would have to face all the things Mrs Pankhurst had described – the inedible food and rough uniform, the all-pervasive smell, the lack of fresh air.

Her mother read the letter too and was appalled by it for she had no doubt that Tavy would break the law. It was in her nature to take the lead and sooner or later she would do it. In fact, there
were
days when she was beginning to wish she’d raised a daughter who simply wanted to marry and settle down and raise a family, like Emmeline.

Emmeline’s first baby was born in March, exactly nine months after her wedding. The news was relayed to Amy and J-J within an hour by means of their new magical telephone, to Amy’s delight.

‘You see what a blessing it is, J-J,’ she said as she put the receiver back onto its hook. ‘To know so soon. Don’t you think that’s wonderful? Maud says we can go and see her this afternoon. I wonder what she’s like.’

She was a plump little thing, weighing nearly nine pounds, and really quite pretty, with fat cheeks, a fuzz of fair hair and big dark eyes. Emmeline was entranced by her.

‘She’s lovely,’ Octavia agreed when she paid her own first visit on her way home from college later in the day. ‘What are you going to call her?’

‘Dora,’ Emmeline said firmly. She’d just finished feeding her infant and now she was sitting up in bed, relaxing against her mound of pillows with the child lying contentedly across her knees. ‘Ernest wanted her to be Agnes, after his sister, but I couldn’t have that. I mean to say, have you
seen
her?’ She
turned her head to talk to the baby, smiling and nodding. ‘You don’t look at bit like an Agnes, do you, my precious?’ she said. ‘No, you don’t. Anyway, we settled for his second choice, so she’s Dora. That’s what you are, aren’t you, my duck? You’re my dear little Dora.’

So she stands up to him, Octavia thought, and was glad of it. It wasn’t good for a man like Ernest to have his own way all the time. ‘I’m so happy for you, Em,’ she said. ‘You’ve got what you always wanted.’

‘Yes,’ Emmeline agreed, stroking the baby’s cheek. ‘I have – but so have you, haven’t you? Off to college and with the cause and everything.’ She gave her cousin a shy smile to show that there was peace between them, even over the suffragettes.

‘Yes,’ Octavia said. ‘I suppose I have.’ Once she would have agreed wholeheartedly, and it
was
true, she
had
found her cause, and she
was
at university. The trouble was she knew the difference between dreams and reality now. And the cost of commitment. But there was some good news.

‘Have you heard about the general election in Finland?’ she asked. ‘They’ve actually elected seven women as MPs. It was in the paper yesterday.’

Emmeline wasn’t interested. Politics was boring. ‘Um,’ she said, gazing at her baby.

Octavia tried another tack. ‘How do Podge and Cyril like being uncles?’ she asked.

‘Podge came over with Ma yesterday,’ Emmeline said. ‘He thought she was lovely. And so you are, aren’t you, my duck? But it’s no good talking to me about Cyril. We never see him these days. Ma phoned him. She told me. But I don’t suppose he said much. There’s no knowing what he thinks.’

‘Oh!’ Octavia said, rather surprised that he’d taken so little interest. ‘He’ll visit you at Easter though, won’t he?’

‘I doubt it. He’s off to Paris at Easter.’

‘With Meriton Major?’ Octavia said. It was hardly a question she was so sure of the answer.

‘Who else would it be? Paris at Easter and a summer touring Europe. They never do anything but gad about.’

Octavia had a sudden sharp-edged memory of Tommy Meriton, all long legs and thick fair hair and dark eyes. Oh, how horrid he was. And what a good job she’d got over him. Let him gad about wherever he likes, she thought. I’m well rid of him.

Emmeline was looking at her again, wondering why she didn’t speak. Probably because they’d been talking about Squirrel, she thought. He’s such a bore. ‘And how is this college of yours?’ she asked, smiling encouragement. ‘You must tell me all about it.’

‘Well…’ Octavia said and cast about in her mind for things that would be interesting. The play had been a great success, she said, and she and Betty and their new friends were all going to see
Arms and the Man
on Saturday. ‘Although whether I shall be able to see much of it from the gods, I can’t say,’ she confessed. Sitting in the front stalls with Tommy and Squirrel in that long ago summer – oh, what a long time ago that summer was – she’d seen everything clearly, except the true nature of Tommy Meriton, of course, but now that she was demoted to the top of the theatre all the little distant faces had furry edges. ‘I’m beginning to wonder whether I need spectacles.’

‘It’s all that reading you have to do,’ Emmeline said sagely. ‘Reading weakens the eyes. Does it give you headaches?
Ernest has terrible headaches sometimes. He says he can’t see the figures properly.’

Octavia could sympathise. She rarely studied figures these days but print had developed a worrying tendency to blur. Sometimes she had to blink until it returned to normal.

The baby gave a little burp and began to suck her fist. ‘Oh, what tales you tell!’ her mother said, beaming at her. ‘You couldn’t possibly be hungry again. I don’t believe a word of it. Not after all you’ve just eaten.’ And she turned to beam at Octavia too. ‘You never saw such an appetite. She’d suck all day if I’d let her. Tell you what, Tavy. When I’ve finished my lying-in, we’ll go down to the opticians together and get your eyes tested. And afterwards we can have tea and cake at Fullers. How would that be?’

It was a happy outing, with the baby in her new pram, with a nursemaid to look after her, and Emmeline in her new clothes and the sun shining on them all. And the spectacles were really quite grand, steel-rimmed and as round as an owl’s eyes. Her father said they made her look quite the scholar but she was more impressed by how much more easily they enabled her to see. ‘I hadn’t realised how poor my eyesight was,’ she said to him. ‘It’s lovely to have everything in focus. I can see every word on the blackboard.’

‘Then we shall expect even higher grades,’ he said, teasing her.

‘I will do my best,’ she promised.

The good grades followed, to nobody’s surprise, for she was working easily now that she could see clearly again. What was a surprise – but only to Octavia herself and certainly not to be revealed to anyone else – was that being suddenly
sharp-sighted
taught her a new and extremely useful trick. She
discovered that if she watched people’s faces as they were speaking and was quick enough to catch the expressions that shadowed across them, she could tell what they were thinking. Even better, she was intrigued to notice that sometimes what they were thinking was at variance with what they were saying. It was like opening a window into their minds and made conversations extremely interesting. As the months passed she used her new skill more and more often, endlessly fascinated by the insights it revealed. It was like a private party trick. But it wasn’t until the end of her second year at college, when Emmeline was expecting her second baby, that she realised how useful it could be.

The year examinations were completed, term was over, she’d just phoned Emmeline to see how she was and been told she was ‘getting a bit weary’, and at that moment she was sitting in the garden in the sunshine in one of her mother’s new cane chairs, composing a letter. Earlier in the term and urged on by Betty Transom and Dorothea Emsworth, she’d stood for election to the local committee of the WSPU and now she was the branch secretary and responsible for all the official business of the group. The letter she was drafting was about the summer demonstration the movement were planning. It was to be in Hyde Park on June 21
^st
, which was just ten days before Em’s baby was due, and the organisers intended it to be the biggest yet. Women were coming from all over England, there were going to be at least a dozen platforms for the speakers, and provision had already been made for a crowd of over a hundred and fifty thousand. ‘
Your support
,’ she was writing, ‘
will make…
’

But at that moment, Minnie the parlour maid appeared in the garden to announce that Mr Cyril had arrived to see her,
‘with his friend, miss’ and where should she show them.

‘Tell them to come through into the garden,’ Tavy said and prepared herself to do battle. Whatever happened next, it would be interesting.

They breezed out of the back door as though they’d been visiting her regularly for months. Cyril pulled up a chair and sat opposite her on the other side of the cane table. ‘Grab a pew, old thing,’ he said to Tommy.

Tavy watched them through her spectacles and was annoyed to see that Tommy was as sure of himself as ever, sprawling in the remaining chair with his long legs stretched before him and smiling at her as if they were old friends. Which they most certainly were not.

‘We’re off to have tea at the Ritz,’ Cyril said, looking pleased with himself. ‘Like to come? We’ve got seats for an absolute corker of a show. We thought tea first and then the show, didn’t we, Tommy? We shall probably go on for supper somewhere afterwards. Make a night of it. Get your skates on.’

You really are insufferable, Octavia thought. You roll in here as if there’s nothing the matter and expect me to drop everything and go rushing off with you, just because you’ve asked me. ‘It might have escaped your notice, Cyril,’ she said, coldly, ‘but some of us have work to do.’

Cyril wasn’t as abashed as she’d hoped he would be. In fact he wasn’t abashed at all. ‘You can work some other time,’ he said. ‘It’s a ripping show. Absolutely top hole.’

‘Yes,’ Tommy said, smiling at her. ‘Do come. You’ll love it.’

And you’re insufferable too, Octavia thought. She picked up her notebook so that he couldn’t help noticing it. ‘Since I last saw you, I’ve been elected to the committee of the
Hampstead WSPU,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m the secretary of the committee. The work I’m doing is for them and the cause, and just a trifle more important than a show – however ripping. Wouldn’t you say so?’ And she looked at him through her spectacles, observing.

He was put out although he hid it quickly, rearranging his expression and smiling again. ‘Oh well,’ he said, lightly, ‘we mustn’t get in the way of the cause, must we, Squirrel? Another time maybe.’

‘Maybe,’ she said, still observing him, and even to her ears the word sounded cold. ‘I hope you’re going to visit your sister,’ she said to Cyril. ‘She’s only got a few more weeks before this baby is born and she’d like to see you.’

‘I might later,’ Cyril said. ‘I mean there’s no rush, is there?’

You won’t go at all, Octavia thought, glaring at him. You’re too busy gadding about and it’s jolly selfish of you. It wouldn’t hurt you to put yourself out a bit. It’s no joke being pregnant, especially when it’s hot.

Her scrutiny was making her cousin uncomfortable. ‘Better be off, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Things to do, don’t you know.’ And he got up and straightened his jacket ready to leave. ‘Time for tea and all that. Come on, Tommy.’

Octavia watched as they disappeared into the house, Cyril waving and Tommy giving her a little bow, in that
old-fashioned
courteous way he’d done at the wedding when he’d kissed her hand. Was he upset? she wondered. It was hard to judge, his expression was so careful. But whether he was or not, she felt pleased with herself. I did that well, she thought. I was cold and I kept him at a distance. I’ll bet no one’s done that to him before. It’ll do him good.

But as she picked up her pencil and returned to her
notebook, she suddenly felt bleak. It would have been nice to have gone to the theatre with them, to sit in the stalls and laugh and joke, the way they’d done that summer. Oh, if only he hadn’t been so horrid!

Cyril and Tommy went straight to the Ritz, where they made a very good tea. It wasn’t until they were on their third plate of fancy cakes that they said anything about Octavia’s refusal.

‘Was she cross about something?’ Tommy wondered, pondering the cakes.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Cyril said, biting into a meringue. ‘After all, I mean to say, what’s she got to be cross about? Best seat in the house. Tea at the Ritz.’

‘I got the feeling she was cross,’ Tommy said, choosing an éclair. ‘That’s all. I mean, she’s never turned us down before.’

‘Always a first,’ Cyril said easily. ‘No, no, she wasn’t cross. She was just being Tavy. She can be dashed odd sometimes. You should have seen her when we were little. She was putting me down because I wouldn’t go and visit Em the minute she told me to. Hey, look who’s coming in. It’s old Tubby Ponsonby. There’s a bit of luck. Come and sit here, Tubby, old thing. We’re going on to a show. You wouldn’t care to join us, would you?’

Preparations for the demonstration in Hyde Park took up all Octavia’s attention for the best part of the next four weeks and by the time the Hampstead party were climbing aboard their chartered charabanc for the journey into the city she was feeling decidedly jaded. It was going to be a very big demonstration, they were all sure of that, but somehow she couldn’t be hopeful of a happy outcome.

‘We shall pass our resolution,’ she said to Betty as the charabanc trundled through the Sunday streets, ‘and everybody will say how wonderful it is, and of course it will be wonderful, we all know that, but the politicians will ignore us.’

Betty feared she was right. ‘But what else can we do?’ she asked. ‘We’ve just got to keep on and on, haven’t we?’

‘Or break the law,’ Octavia said.

‘I’m not sure I could do that,’ Betty admitted. ‘I don’t think I could stand being sent to prison. I mean, not knowing what we know about it.’ Mrs Pankhurst’s revelations about prison life had left her deeply troubled. ‘I mean to say, could
you
?’

Octavia looked out at the quiet rows of shops, all so respectable and shuttered and well-kept, and wondered whether she could. If this demonstration fails, she thought, I shall have to decide. The thought made her sigh. ‘Ah well,’ she said. ‘We shall see, shan’t we?’

It was an absolutely enormous demonstration. The crowds filled Hyde Park from one side to the other and stood packed together in front of all twenty platforms. The speakers wore elegant hats and sashes striped in the suffragette colours, purple, green and white. Annie Kenny brought a trainload of mill-girls with her from Lancashire and told her listeners that they had the support of men as well as women. Christabel Pankhurst asked the politicians to understand that the campaign had moved on from the days when it could be derided and belittled. It had now won popular support and they would ignore it at their peril. ‘You only have to look at the size of the crowd gathered here to understand what is happening,’ she said. ‘This is a great popular movement.’