Bring Out the Banners Page 2

  His publisher had tried to soothe him. ‘Something in it, me boy. Perhaps a leetle more experience, don’t you know?’ He recommended journalism. Gave one an insight into many different walks of life. And the money might be useful. Unless a first novelist was lucky it could be years before book royalties gave him a livelihood.

  Obediently, Guy scoured Fleet Street for work. Vainly. He was told that a young man must start in the provinces and learn his trade the hard way. But Guy did not want to go back to the provinces. London was where everything happened and where the publishers were.

  Surely one of the city’s evening newspapers, if none of the nationals, could use a ‘promising young writer’ with ‘wit and a way with words’? Apparently not. Weary and dejected, he came to the eighth and humblest paper on his list. Fortunately its Mr Rudd was, like himself, from Yorkshire.

  Even that friendly little man could not invent a non-existent job for him. ‘But there are bits and pieces, lad. I’m always on the look-out for them. The staff men can’t be everywhere. I’ll always look at anything you send in.’ He held out a press ticket for a recital by an obscure pianist. ‘Might be worth a couple of paras. Not more.’

  So Guy was launched upon a career of grubbing for odd guineas. Sometimes Rudd took his copy, sometimes not. And there were those occasions when no staff man was available, so the pay was certain and he might get a free theatre or concert ticket into the bargain. He was brought into contact with all sorts of people, getting a wider vision of the world.

  ‘Good idea to specialize a bit as well,’ one man advised him. ‘Get known as the chap who knows a thing or two about the background.’

  Guy observed that Rudd had a certain sympathy with these women who were always agitating for votes. Well, not sympathy, maybe – pressmen had to be impartial – but an ‘interest’. ‘They’re always up to something outlandish,’ said Rudd defensively. ‘Good for a headline. So – any good story you can bring me on the suffragettes, I’ll likely buy it.’

  He had done so on several occasions. And the Plymouth story, he had assured Guy, was a real scoop. Besides the brief factual report Guy had just dictated for today’s later editions, he wanted a full-length descriptive piece of that dash across Plymouth Sound. It would be an exclusive in tomorrow’s issue, with Guy’s name on it, his first byline ever.

  Guy was already scribbling down his copy as the express glided into Exeter. He broke his journey there just long enough to check the accuracy of his own guess – Mrs Pankhurst had arrived and was safely lodged in Exeter jail. The agencies would be handling the story from now on. He hurried back to the station, bought a sandwich, and caught the next London train.

  He resumed the rough draft of his feature. One thing worried him – he wanted to highlight that suffragette girl, standing erect in the bows, decorative as a figurehead. ‘And you didn’t get her name?’ Rudd would demand. ‘Her age? Her background? Was she a Londoner? What sort of a journalist do you call yourself?’ Guy shuddered to imagine himself answering feebly, ‘I asked her – but she only slapped my face.’

  Reluctantly he decided that he must play down her part in the drama. He finished his piece, read it back, trimmed it to the length Rudd wanted. Then, having travelled down on a very early train, he tilted over in his corner and caught up on his sleep.

  Walking out of Paddington he saw, daubed across the pavement at his bus stop in large white letters:

  WELCOME HOME RALLY

  FOR MRS PANKHURST

  EMPRESS THEATRE

  SUNDAY

  Two earnest-looking women were blotting out the first two words and substituting PROTEST. They were quick off the mark, he thought admiringly. The newspaper-boys were still racing along Praed Street yelling, ‘Pankhurst sensation! Arrest at sea!’

  Darkness had fallen, though Oxford Street was an unbroken dazzle of pre-Christmas window-display. He jumped off at Holborn, plunged through the dimmer byways round Red Lion Square, and reached Lamb’s Conduit Street, where the friendly little shops near his flat produced the illusion of living in a village. He paused to buy sausages, then let himself into the gloomy gas-lit hall, and climbed the stairs. His flat was three flights up, through a pervasive atmosphere of perpetually heating cat food from the old couple’s kitchen just below him. He tried to forget the cat food as he laid out the pallid sausages in his frying pan and pricked them with a fork. They were soon sizzling cheerfully and turning to a healthier brown. The kettle started to sing.

  The gas fire made everything more cheerful. When he had eaten and coaxed the last cupful of tea from the pot, he would willingly have lain back and slipped into sleep. But he must type his copy and take it down to Fleet Street, ready for tomorrow’s midday edition.

  He groaned, uncovered his typewriter and began to tap away with two fingers. Then out into the chilly dark, a brisk walk down Chancery Lane and into Fleet Street, where the presses of the national dailies were throbbing away to produce next morning’s papers. Rudd had gone, his own final edition safely on the streets. Guy handed in his piece and strode home.

  What a day, what an endless day! Bed at last – no, a bath first. A match scraped, the geyser lit with its usual alarming explosion, the arc of steaming water came hissing down. He lay and wallowed, and thought again of that girl.

  Rudd had said nothing about covering the Sunday rally in the Empress Theatre. Might be a good idea to go there, see what happened… Might get a paragraph out of it… Or something.

  Chapter Four

  Fiona too was looking forward to Sunday’s meeting.

  Their failure to save Mrs Pankhurst from arrest had been a cruel disappointment. But even her absence from the platform at Earl’s Court would not rob the rally of its emotional quality. Fiona would not have missed it for anything.

  It was also a perfect excuse for cutting short her weekend visit to her home in the south London suburbs. Normally, as soon as her office closed at midday on Saturdays, she was expected to rush for her train at Victoria – and stay till Sunday evening or even crack of dawn on Monday. She loved her mother, she was willing to share her sister’s bed, but her stepfather’s company was increasingly irksome.

  ‘Uncle Jim’, as she still called him, was not even a real uncle. He had come into the house as a lodger, and remained when her father went off to the South African war. His weekly payment was more badly needed than ever when her father died in the military hospital in Cape Town. After a decent interval Uncle Jim had married her mother. Fiona could never accept him as a substitute parent. The job in central London had provided her means of escape.

  ‘But he’s fond of you,’ her mother would protest. Fiona did not like the ways he showed his affection – the bear-like hugs, the reek of whisky on the rough moustache scraping across her lips, the heavy humour when he twitted her about her friends.

  That particular Saturday he had picked up a new music hall song in the pub. He set the kitchen ringing with it when he came blundering in.

  ‘Put me on an island where the girls are few,

  Put me with the most ferocious lions in the zoo,

  Put me on a treadmill, and I’ll never, never fret –

  But for pity’s sake don’t put me with a Suffragette!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Fiona tartly, ‘I’m just off to bed. I’ve had a hard week.’

  She had said nothing about the Plymouth adventure. There was no hope now of continuing the quiet chat with her mother. She gave her a goodnight kiss, slid skilfully past Uncle Jim and ran upstairs. She heard his laughter below. ‘What that gal wants is a young man to knock some sense into her!’

  Soon after breakfast she slipped thankfully away. Her mother could not comprehend why she was missing Sunday dinner just for some meeting. Surely the Sunday roast, with all the trimmings on which Uncle Jim insisted, should be a landmark in the weekly round of cheap teashop lunches and makeshift suppers with that girl who shared her rooms? Fiona herself felt a pang of regret as she hurried to the station, the grey ai
r full of clanging church bells, the grey streets full of grey people parading to church and chapel.

  She lunched frugally in the refreshment room at Victoria, reached Earl’s Court in ample time, donned her sash, drew her collection-plate, and was allotted her area in the auditorium. She stood in the foyer, fascinated to study the variety of types attracted to the suffragette cause. There were grand ladies, descending from motorcars or carriages, bowing their heads in stately fashion lest their immense hats be knocked askew. There were East End factory-girls in shawls, with pinched white faces. There were clever-looking intellectual women – she spotted Doctor Ethel Smyth, in her mannish tweeds, who had taken time from composing her operas to give the movement its stirring March of the Women. There were a lot of men too – escorts and serious sympathizers and possibly troublemakers. In top hats and trilbies, bowlers and cloth caps, they streamed across the foyer.

  A diffident voice murmured in her ear. She swung round. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I was just asking, what do we do to join?’

  It was a girl of her own age, fair, a pink and gold girl, expensively dressed.

  ‘You can fill in a form. From that table.’ Fiona led her across and hovered, ready to help. The girl bent forward and wrote.

  ‘Isherwood,’ Fiona read, ‘Isabel Florence.’ Then the girl gave a little cry of vexation. ‘Dash! Force of habit!’ She crossed out the word she had just written below and substituted ‘Miss’. Fiona saw that the word crossed out was ‘Lady’. She exclaimed in turn when the next space was filled in with ‘63 Bedford Square’.

  ‘Oh – we’re almost neighbours!’

  The stranger’s smile was radiant. ‘Really? You live in the square?’

  ‘Lord, no!’ Fiona thought of the stately eighteenth-century houses she passed every day on her way to the office. ‘Nothing so grand! A little side street, Francis Street, just off Tottenham Court Road – ’

  ‘I know! By that interesting furniture shop! I adore those simple modern designs, don’t you?’ They clearly had tastes in common. But when she had signed her form the girl said, with an obvious effort: ‘Don’t think me rude – but when I saw you just now I wondered, haven’t I seen you before? Was it you, on Thursday, in that motor boat? At Plymouth?’

  ‘I was in a motorboat – at Plymouth – ’

  ‘And I was on deck on the Majestic! I’d been talking to Mrs Pankhurst, actually.’ The girl’s voice thrilled with pride. ‘I saw them arrest her.’

  Fiona longed to hear more. ‘Are you alone?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Mamma wanted my brother to come with me, but you know what brothers are – ’

  ‘We must find you a seat.’ Fiona led the way up the stairs. She saw two empty places at the end of a row. ‘I must be on the gangway,’ she explained. ‘Got to jump up in the interval with my collecting-plate.’

  For a few minutes they compared notes excitedly about the Plymouth episode. Belle seemed thrilled to meet someone so deeply involved in the adventure. Fiona envied her that encounter with Mrs Pankhurst. She herself had never seen her at close quarters, much less spoken to her. ‘But she’s always in prison,’ she said. ‘Like now.’

  The theatre was packed. There must have been four or five thousand people. A cheer went up as someone was carried in on a stretcher and placed in a prominent position in front.

  ‘That’s Annie Kenney,’ Fiona whispered. ‘She’s been on hunger-strike.’ Annie was a Lancashire mill-girl, she explained, and still often wore her shawl. She had heard Mrs Pankhurst’s eldest daughter speak, and fallen under her spell. Christabel Pankhurst had brought her down to London. Annie had little education but she soon proved herself a born organizer. She was now one of the best-loved figures in the movement.

  ‘Those hunger-strikes – I don’t know how they can do it.’ Belle shuddered. ‘I wouldn’t have the courage.’

  ‘I don’t think I would.’ Fiona knew that she was not cut out for martyrdom. She had never deliberately sought arrest as some women did. If she appeared in court, let alone was sent to jail, she would lose her job. And new ones were not easy to find. Arrest would mean not only a few weeks in prison, it would mean a humiliating return home, to be a financial burden on her mother and a butt for Uncle Jim’s crude humour.

  A diminutive figure was advancing, with something like a swagger, to the front of the stage. She was met with an almost hysterical ovation.

  ‘Who on earth is she?’ Belle demanded.

  ‘That’s the General.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘That’s what we call her. Mrs Flora Drummond.’

  Belle soon saw that the nickname was appropriate. Her speech, delivered in broad Scots, was brisk and confident, carrying the very accent of command. Each decisive sentence was met with an outburst of applause. Fiona, longing to tell her new friend about this legendary character, knew that she must wait for a quieter occasion.

  Flora Drummond might not look like a general. Barely five feet tall, she had once missed a Post Office job by being an inch below the regulation minimum. She had earned her nickname for her organizing talents and a fighting spirit inherited from her Highland ancestors.

  As a heckler she could hold her own – even against Winston Churchill, who as Home Secretary had been a formidable opponent of the suffragettes. And once, outside 10 Downing Street, while the police were occupied with a woman who had chained herself to the railings, the General had accidentally touched an innocent-looking knob on the Prime Minister’s front door. To her delighted surprise it had activated a catch and the door had swung open. Before anyone could stop her, the General had marched in – and it had taken several horrified private secretaries to eject her.

  Over the past few years there had been no end to her exploits. She had hired a motorboat on the Thames and, with a megaphone, harangued the MPs as they sat at tea on their famous terrace. Just before George the Fifth’s coronation she had led a rival procession astride an immense charger, wearing a peaked military cap and a long riding coat with epaulettes. Surely Belle had heard of her?

  Today the General was recruiting ladies for a bodyguard which in future would surround Mrs Pankhurst and protect her from arrest. Even a small woman, if she studied the Japanese art of jujitsu, could overthrow a strong man.

  This suggestion met with enthusiasm from some of the audience but disapproval from others. ‘It could be dangerous,’ said the woman on Belle’s far side. ‘You could injure someone – even kill him.’

  The General wound up her speech with an appeal for funds. ‘There will now be an interval – during which the collectors will go round. Think of the leader we should be welcoming home today. Give generously!’

  Fiona sprang up and hurried away to the area assigned to her.

  Chapter Five

  Coins pattered into her plate. Copper, silver, often gold. There were discreetly folded banknotes. There were rings and other items of jewellery. One old woman dropped in a shabby, clinking little bag that probably contained farthings. Fiona moved smiling along the rows, but never looked straight at the giver or the gift so as to cause embarrassment.

  She would have passed Guy Dangerfield without recognizing him if he had not mumbled awkwardly: ‘Press. We’re supposed to be neutral.’

  ‘Of course.’ She saw then who it was. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ Her face went hot as she remembered the slap. ‘I owe you an apology – I was so ashamed afterwards!’

  ‘Think nothing of it.’ He had a rather attractive smile.

  Someone was waiting to pass. ‘I – I mustn’t block the way – ’ She moved along, stumbling over people’s feet.

  ‘See you later,’ he called after her.

  There was no need. She had made her apology. She completed her collection, handed in the result and returned thankfully to Belle.

  Several speakers followed. The last was a recent hunger-striker – only one of hundreds, she emphasized, who had taken this desperate action in the past year. ‘People say, surely it is all foll
y. If it is not hysteria, at least it is unreasonable. Unreasonable? They will not realize that we are like an army, we fight for a cause, and in a struggle weapons must be used. The weapons we ask for are simple – a fair hearing – but that is refused us in Parliament, refused us by the government, refused us in the law courts. Men would choose violence, but the women of this movement have stood out against killing – or even harming their opponents. They prefer to endure the horrors of the hunger-strike themselves, and exert moral pressure on the government – ’

  This statement produced a roar of applause, not least from Belle’s neighbour. The speaker wound up with a fervent appeal. ‘This is the most glorious fight that has ever been! Before you leave this theatre, become a member of our Union. Say, “I will stand by you whatever the world says, whatever public opinion says!” Say you are for us – now – before another minute goes by!’ Belle was shouting with the rest.

  The woman walked shakily from the platform. As the tumult subsided someone came forward and stirred it up afresh with an announcement. The collection had amounted to more than ten thousand pounds. With the funds raised by Mrs Pankhurst’s meetings in America the total would be almost fifteen thousand. But they would need every penny for the struggle that now lay ahead.

  As the two girls went down the stairs, Belle said, ‘Since we both live in Bloomsbury, perhaps – ’

  ‘Of course! Let’s go together.’

  The young man stood waiting in the foyer. ‘It’s for me to apologize – accosting you like that at Plymouth – ’

  Belle broke in. ‘Plymouth? It was you in the motorboat?’

  ‘You’ll excuse us, we have to catch our bus,’ said Fiona coolly. She sailed on, leaving Belle to follow. He must not get Belle’s name and put it in his paper.

  They boarded a bus. ‘Can we go on the top?’ Belle pleaded.

  ‘Why not?’