The Hourglass Factory (3 page)

‘Can I help?’

Frankie turned and it was then that she realised what was so odd about the man. He was corseted to a gruesome size; fourteen and a half, fifteen inches. She tried not to stare, concentrating
instead on his face. His cheeks were sharp, like they had been cut by tailor’s scissors, his round brown eyes large and curious.

She cleared her throat. Could she ask outright for Ebony Diamond? She hesitated. ‘I’d like to buy a corset.’

Mr Smythe couldn’t conceal his amusement as his gaze roved her trouser suit. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, I have a wedding to attend. On Saturday,’ she added curtly, thinking that corset shoppers were most probably curt. She was in the process of dreaming up some monstrous dress to
tell him about, the kind her mother might have made her wear if she did indeed have a wedding to go to, when she spied a shadow springing into shape on the side wall of the shop. Smythe seemed to
notice it too for he stepped in front of her, trying to block her view and began rambling loudly about the extraordinary weather and whether an autumn wedding was something he would prefer, or a
spring one. But Frankie had already seen the silhouette. Now, all of a sudden it dawned on her what the photographer man at the
Gazette
had meant when he said ‘get her
waist’.

It was Ebony Diamond. It had to be. She could have been cut from a Victorian novel, swooping into full view now from beyond the curtain covering the rear of the shop. A black old-fashioned gown
was sculpted around her, curving up to her neck and down in pleats and layers to trail along the ground behind her as she rushed. But it was her waist that caught Frankie’s eye. She was
corseted to a size every bit as tight as the shop’s proprietor. It made Frankie want to belch imagining how tightly squeezed the food and organs were in there. Frankie had only ever worn
stays for a week when she was thirteen – the nuns called them ‘stays’, ‘corsets’ were for the Mary Magdalenes of the world – but the pain from being birched for
not wearing them was outweighed by the pain from wearing them so she had given up.

The woman’s hands were coated in tiny black gloves and struck ahead, keeping her balance as she ran into the shop crashing into racks of carefully spaced bodices, knocking them over,
tripping over her skirts. She dashed past Frankie, leaving a pleasing sweet smell drifting behind her,
poudre d
’
amour
and gin. Suddenly her ankle became tangled in the
serpentine straps of a corset that had fallen and she stopped for breath.

Smythe coloured from the neck up, and made a weak attempt to direct Frankie towards the fitting room with his hand to her back. She nimbly slipped his grasp.

‘Excuse me,’ he muttered, and edged past her, picking up a couple of fallen garments as he went. ‘Ebony,’ he hissed. Frankie was surprised at his use of her first name.
‘What has got into you? You’re trembling like a kicked dog.’

The woman in the black dress spun to face him. ‘She’s up there, isn’t she?’

‘Who?’

‘You know perfectly well. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll come with me and not come back.’

‘Now is not the time.’

With a shaking hand Ebony reached down inside her lacy bosom and pulled something out. ‘You want to ask her –’ she gestured with her head towards the ceiling of the shop where
scuffling, workshop sounds were rumbling away, ‘– where she got this from.’ Holding the thing up to the light, Frankie saw it was a brooch, a large silver one, with a winking,
glinting, gold pattern carved onto its surface. ‘’Cos it didn’t fall off a tailor’s dummy.’ Ebony tipped her arm back, pausing for a second, then hurled the thing
forcefully at Smythe. He ducked, cowering his hands to his head, and it went plummeting into the green velvet drape covering the back of the shop, then hit the floor with a bullet’s
whack.

‘Ebony!’

Ebony stared at him. Her black eyes burned. For a second Frankie thought she might be about to start weeping. Then her gaze hardened again. ‘Ask her,’ she said, tipping her chin
towards the ceiling once more. She flung another rack of clothing out of the way, swung open the door of the shop, making the bell jerk, and slammed it shut.

So that was Ebony Diamond, Frankie thought. The Notorious Madame Suffragette. Striking face, somewhat tempestuous, but then Stark’s boy had said not to pick a fight with her.

Suddenly Frankie remembered the camera still slung across her back.

‘Wait!’ She reached round her shoulder, unclipping the latch on the box. The brass tracks slipped out so fast she nearly dropped it. She wriggled the strap over her head and let the
case fall to the floor. ‘I need a photograph.’ Tripping over the spilled clothing she raced towards the door.

Frankie could see Ebony Diamond moving quickly along the street, her black hourglass figure melting into the fog. She yanked open the door, letting in a rush of cool damp air.
‘Wait!’ she cried. ‘I’m a journalist! Wait! Miss Diamond!’

Ebony began picking up speed, her swift walk becoming a jog, then a run, her skirts skating out behind her like raven wings. Frankie gritted her teeth and ran after her, feeling the tightness of
her trousers catching, regretting the amount of ale she had drunk over the past few weeks.

Up ahead at the crossroads with Brook Street, Ebony had to stop as a chain of trams went sliding past tinkling their bells. A Fenwick’s shopwoman in an apron approached Frankie brandishing
a bottle of the latest Guerlain Eau de Parfum. ‘Musk!’ she barked. ‘Musk direct from the Musk Ox!’ Frankie dodged her spraying hand and dipped round in front of Ebony
Diamond.

‘Miss Diamond.’

It took a second for Ebony’s black eyes to latch onto her. Her face was white as the moon with a short upturned nose and a wide scarlet mouth. ‘Are you following me?’ she
spat.

Frankie was out of breath but managed to pant, ‘I just want to ask you a few quick questions. About Holloway prison. For the portrait page. The newspaper. How does that sound?’ She
stuck her hand into her pocket and pulled out one of her calling cards.

Miss Diamond looked startled for a second, then took the card and ran her finger absently over the embossed surface. She studied the letters slowly. ‘Francesca George, Contributor,
London Evening Gazette
.’ The lines on her face straightened out; she looked like she might have something on the tip of her tongue. ‘A journalist, you say?’

‘That’s right,’ Frankie was beginning to line up the camera. If she could just keep her in one place for a few seconds. Truth be told, she could probably make the rest up.
Facts were fairly sticky at the
London Evening Gazette
. And that tiff at the shop was a winner whether it was about tax or pink knickerbockers.

Suddenly Ebony rammed the card back towards her, sending the camera stabbing into Frankie’s face. ‘You’ve got some nerve, giving this to me.’

Frankie stumbled backwards. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I just need to ask you a few questions. About the force-feeding.’

‘Force-feeding my eye.’ She jabbed the corner of the card at Frankie. ‘You’re the one drew that cartoon for
Punch
, aren’t you – “Take it up the
nose Maud I will, pass the tea”.’

Frankie’s stomach sank. She had known this was going to happen as soon as Teddy Hawkins mentioned the word ‘suffragette’. It was why they had chosen her, she was certain.
They’d all be in the Cheshire Cheese by now, knocking back pints of porter, sharing pork scratchings and smirking.

The cartoon in question had been drawn by Frankie several months ago, and had been intended for
Punch
. Frankie had been trying for years to have a piece printed there and was always told
that her drawings weren’t satirical enough, except this one which the boy on the
Punch
reception desk, who didn’t look old enough to be in long trousers, had coughed at before
handing back. After
Punch
rejected it, it had floated down the murky Fleet Street food chain, before landing at the door of the
London Evening Gazette
, a rag with circus-style
lettering for its title, and the strapline, ‘The Greatest Newspaper on Earth’. The cartoon was perfect
Evening Gazette
material, Mr Stark had said. A group of women poised over
cakes and scones – her figurines were ‘superb’, he said, ‘just like
Punch
’ – while one was busy fixing to the teapot a long tube of the kind used in
Holloway Gaol to force-feed women on the hunger strike. Ebony Diamond had misquoted her. The caption was, ‘No Mildred, I think I’ll take it through the nose this time’.

Mr Stark himself had called her into his office the Monday after it was published, shook her hand – the only time he had looked her in the eye – and offered her a Friday column which
he billed as a ‘guide to society’ with Twinkle, an ageing ‘lady about town’.

‘Look, I just need one photograph. You don’t have to say anything. But if I turn up without a picture, my editor’ll hang my guts for a laundry line.’

‘Get that thing out of my face.’ Ebony’s black skirts rustled as she pushed past Frankie. The traffic had cleared, creating an opening. Frankie ducked in her way, raising the
camera to face height.

Suddenly Ebony lunged. As Frankie snapped the shutter, the full force of Ebony Diamond’s right hook whipped her jaw round. Ebony was as nimble as she was strong and her hands danced over
Frankie’s until she had a firm purchase on the camera. In one sharp movement she had ripped it away and was striding back towards the Fenwick’s woman.

‘It’s not mine. Give it back.’

‘You should have thought about that.’ Ebony tossed the camera to the ground and for one terrifying moment Frankie thought she might be about to stand on it.

‘It’s not mine, for pity’s sake!’

Ebony took a step back, then reached across to the Fenwick’s woman and snatched the bottle of musk perfume out of her hand.

‘Have you gone mad?’ Frankie realised with a strike of horror what she was up to and could only watch as Ebony cracked the atomiser off the top of the bottle with the side of her
hand and poured perfume all over the camera. She reached into her dress pocket, pulled out a match, struck it off the sole of her boot and dropped it.

Shoppers and clerks sprang back as blue-gold flames washed up the sides of the leather. The protective gloss began to sizzle and burn.

Frankie scrambled forwards. ‘What d’you do that for? Off your onion, you are! You’re madder than a sack of cats.’ The heat scorched her hands as she tried to smother the
flames. Looking around her desperately she saw a hurdy-gurdy man with a tin cup of foul-coloured beer. She swooped on it, snatching it up, ignoring his protests, and tossed it quickly onto the
fire.

Leathered smoke hissed into the air. The flames flattened then vanished. Frankie tentatively touched one of the brass tracks, and whipped her finger back as it scalded. Bits of the metal along
the sides had melted out of shape. She would have to take it to one of the clockmaker’s on Gray’s Inn Road before handing it back.

She looked up and around her but there was no sign of Ebony. The London crowds had folded back into order. If she hadn’t been swallowed by the mob of people she had dissolved into the
thickening mist. Sitting back on her haunches on the cold ground, Frankie let out a long groan.

This was just about the worst day she could remember since Mr Rodgers from the
Tottenham Evening News
made her hang around Southwark morgue for six hours waiting to catch a glimpse of a
man who had been savaged by a pig. She wished bitterly that she had taken the quoits tournament, or a divorce hearing, or stayed in bed and settled for no work. Anything but this mad, savage
suffragette.

She climbed back to her feet and picked up the sodden, scorched malty-smelling camera. Traffic was careering along wildly, bodies began to push against her in their eagerness to get past. The
Fenwick’s woman was exclaiming ‘dear me, dear me.’

With a heavy feeling she started off in the direction of the nearest tube station. She had gone a few paces when a colour caught her eye in the grimy mist. Somewhere along the road a flash of
bright copper was bobbing up and down, at first gently, then slowly breaking into a more vigorous bounce, swerving through the traffic and pedestrians.

The boy with the ginger hair, the boy who had let her into the shop. Frankie stopped to watch him as he ducked behind a parked cart, looked ahead, then dashed out again, light as a tomcat on his
feet.

Probably a pickpocket, she thought. Just as well she hadn’t given him that shilling, thank heavens for small mercies. Then with another audible groan – this one drawing looks of
horror from the Bond Street crowds – she realised she had left the camera case back at the corset shop.

At the same time, three and a half miles away on Shoe Lane, Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union – The Suffragettes – walked
into an ironmonger’s. She was familiar with the smell of creosote, the various sizes of nails and washers that sat in the glass cabinet behind the counter. Carefully minding her skirts
against hooks and joints of wood protruding from the shelves, she sallied up the small aisle in the centre of the shop and idly fingered a row of small rubber mallets. Through a bead curtain a man
appeared. He was in his fifties, ruddy in the face with a neat white beard like Father Christmas. ‘May I help?’

Mrs Pankhurst looked up artfully as if stirred from a deep thought. ‘Oh yes, I’m looking for twenty-five hammers.’

The man didn’t bat an eyelid. Schoolteacher, he was thinking, by the look of her. The fine stern nose and Worcester porcelain eyes. And that dress, a thick brown wool creation pinned right
up proper despite the sunshine. School marm of a boys’ school. And a well-spoken one at that.

‘Well, it depends what you’re after. If it’s for woodwork, the basic craft one will do. Under normal circumstances you’d pay a shilling each, but if you want twenty-five
I’ll do the lot for twenty shillings.’

Mrs Pankhurst mulled it over. ‘That does sound rather fair.’