Bring Out the Banners Read online

  She had been on the run for some time since her last release, staying in safe houses, keeping out of London, lest the police pounce again and send her back to prison to serve another short stretch of her unfinished sentence. But a leader must be seen leading. She could not hide for ever.

  She began to speak, quietly and calmly, holding her audience with her extraordinary magnetism.

  ‘My friends, I am here to challenge this cowardly government which makes war on defenceless and voteless women. I have reached London despite armies of police. In a few minutes I am coming out amongst you and I challenge the government to rearrest me!’

  Fiona felt something being pushed into her gloved hand. An open notebook. Guy was whispering in her ear. ‘Could you get me a bit verbatim? Rudd loves a quote.’

  Obediently she took his pencil and scribbled her shorthand by the light of a street lamp.

  Mrs Pankhurst turned to the men in her audience. ‘I want you men, you taxpayers, to ask what it costs to deprive women of the vote – what you pay for these armies of police in plain clothes. Well, if you like to pay, you men who call yourselves practical businessmen, go on paying. You will come to the conclusion that it is cheaper to give women the vote, because I tell you that this fight is going on until we win!’

  A furious man began to shout. ‘You ought to be deported! You’re preaching sedition!’

  Mrs Pankhurst gave him her sweetest smile. ‘I should come back again, my friend! Yes, I am seditious, and I shall go on being seditious – until I am brought, with other women, within the constitution of my country. For we have no constitutional rights, though we are taxed the same as men.’

  She kept her speech short but vigorous. Fiona felt the tension all around her. Could she finish before the police arrived? Someone would have alerted them by now.

  ‘As the Prime Minister will not listen to us, I have written a letter, a loyal and respectful letter, to the King. I have said to him, “Your Majesty, we have no power to vote for Members of Parliament, and therefore for us there is no House of Commons. We have no voice in the House of Lords. But we have a King, and to him we make our appeal. We ask of Your Majesty the audience that we are confident will be granted to us.”’ She wound up amid a tumult of enthusiasm.

  Suddenly the balcony was empty. And a minute later she was out on the pavement in the midst of them all, greeting old friends and unknown supporters. Her bodyguard were now much in evidence. Fiona warned Guy not to push forward lest he be mistaken for a plain-clothes policeman.

  Within a few minutes the cry was raised. The police were coming. Mrs Pankhurst broke free from her admirers and ran into the house. The door slammed behind her. In no time the porch and front steps were packed with a solid phalanx of the bodyguard ladies. Long before they could be shifted Mrs Pankhurst would have made her planned escape through some back way.

  The three friends headed for the Underground station. Guy needed a telephone kiosk, to catch the late edition. He dived in, drawing Fiona after him, silencing her confused protests. ‘I’ll need you to read back your shorthand.’ They stood there, jammed together in the scanty space. She could scarcely lift the notebook high enough to read from it. Outside, Belle made faces at them, a remote but hilarious chaperone.

  Fiona admired the decisive way he dictated his impressions of the scene they had just left. Then, in a changed tone, he added: ‘And hang on – I’ve got a quote. Exact words of Mrs P.’ He squeezed himself sideways so that Fiona could speak into the mouthpiece. ‘Slow and clear,’ he told her.

  She read her notes as instructed. He pushed her gently aside, spoke briefly to the person at the other end, and hung up. ‘Bless you,’ he said warmly. ‘It’s a great help, having a good quote.’

  One way and another, she thought, it had been a wonderful evening.

  Chapter Ten

  The first half-hour of the office day was often the most trying. Before settling down to his dictation Mr Bagshaw liked to scan his newspaper, reading bits aloud and making comments that infuriated Fiona, who dared not let herself utter a syllable in answer.

  ‘A letter to the editor from Sir Almoth Wright! And it says he is a most eminent physician. He tells us that militancy is the result of mental illness. Fifty per cent of women go slightly crazy in middle age! He admits that some of the others have achieved distinction in various fields – by following male examples. But he says, “in public life there are no good women, only women who have lived under the influence of good men.” Very true!’

  Fiona could only swallow her indignation and console herself with the knowledge that any day now Mrs Pankhurst – admittedly middle-aged, but far from crazy – would be launching a new campaign that would set the country alight from Scotland to the south coast. There were suffragettes everywhere, local leaders in a dozen regions whose exploits were now legendary, like the irrepressible Edith Rigby in Lancashire, a friend of the Pankhursts and no less dedicated, constantly in and out of prison. When all these women swung into action Mr Bagshaw would really have something to exclaim over.

  Meanwhile things were relatively quiet in London. Guy urged her to remember that there were other things in life besides the suffragette struggle. Rudd gave him press tickets for plays and concerts and art exhibitions, tickets that would otherwise be wasted. There were far too many events to cover in the paper.

  Guy took her to the Old Vic, which had launched its first full season of constantly changing Shakespeare plays. Elsewhere they saw Mrs Patrick Campbell as the Cockney flower-girl in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, and the Russian ballet with Nijinsky performing his superhuman leaps. They went to a big concert to hear the first performance of Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony and to an art exhibition of the Post-Impressionist painters, whose flamboyant colours and odd perspectives were stirring such an argument.

  Fiona had to agree. There were other things in life – fascinating things – besides the political fight.

  When the warmer days came, said Guy, they would go walking in Epping Forest. ‘I’ll look forward to that,’ she said, and meant it.

  One evening, being at the theatre, they missed the news in the evening papers. It came as a shock when Mr Bagshaw greeted her exultantly in the office next morning.

  ‘They’ve caught that woman again!’

  She stared. ‘Mrs Pankhurst?’ No need to ask.

  She had appeared in Glasgow to start her new campaign. ‘They had her precious bodyguard massed on the platform behind her – these so-called ‘ladies’ had brought Indian clubs concealed beneath their skirts! They had hidden barbed wire amid the floral decorations along the front of the platform – ’ Mr Bagshaw spluttered with indignation. ‘But the police charged with their truncheons from the back of the hall – the women threw chairs at them and flowerpots, but it was in vain. At this moment,’ he concluded triumphantly, ‘Mrs Pankhurst will be in the train to London – and tonight she will be continuing her sentence in Holloway. They should never have let her out.’

  It was some time before he could calm his feelings enough to dictate his letters.

  It was a great relief when she could escape from the office on some errand for him. Such an opportunity occurred the following day, and, as it was late in the morning, Mr Bagshaw told her to take her lunch-hour before coming back. Returning by way of Trafalgar Square she was delighted to encounter Guy. They agreed at once to have an inexpensive snack together in a teashop and, since she had ample time, to pay a brief visit to the National Gallery. ‘It’s a free day,’ he said, ‘a chance not to be missed!’

  He wanted to show her the famous Venus of Velázquez, recently bought for the nation after hanging for a century in a remote Yorkshire mansion, Rokeby Hall.

  They climbed the great staircase and found it at once. The goddess was reclining on a grey-draped couch, the perfect foil for her pink flesh. She was studying her face in a mirror held by Cupid, so that it could be seen in reflection though she had her back to the viewer. ‘Ingenious,’ said Guy.
r />   Two heavily-built men were sitting on a red plush seat, apparently indifferent to the masterpiece. They showed more interest in the people pausing to admire it.

  ‘Art-lovers?’ queried Fiona ironically as she moved on.

  ‘Policemen, more likely. Did you notice their boots?’

  She laughed. ‘I know it’s terribly valuable – but I don’t see anyone snatching it in broad daylight!’

  It looked enormously heavy in its massive frame with its thick glass covering. It was about six feet by four. A job for muscular removal men.

  In the next room she saw a familiar face. Surely that was Mary Richardson? She had often seen her at meetings, once indeed talked to her. She was an interesting, attractive young woman. She had told Fiona of her Canadian childhood, how she had enjoyed riding the logs as they bumped and swirled their way down-river to the foaming rapids. Then, at fifteen, a few years in Paris – quite a change! A suffragette since 1906…

  ‘Yes, I noticed her,’ Guy murmured as they passed on. ‘I wondered if she was really sketching – or just pretending to.’

  ‘She was too absorbed to recognize me.’

  They turned back towards the staircase. Twelve o’clock. One of the men stood up, murmured something about lunch to his companion, and departed. The other did not stir.

  Mary Richardson was drawing near to the Velázquez masterpiece. There was something odd about the way she handled her sketchbook, a stiffness in her left arm. She moved from picture to picture, apparently aimless yet somehow purposeful. Fiona was seized with a sudden premonition that something dreadful was about to happen. She turned instinctively to Guy, a few yards behind her, studying a painting.

  A sharp crack made her spin round again. The man had jumped to his feet, alert, and was gazing up at a skylight that a workman on a high ladder had been repairing only a few minutes before. His back was to the Velázquez – and to Mary Richardson, who was raising a small axe for a second blow.

  Fiona gasped with horror. ‘Oh, no!’

  Guy was at her side. ‘She’s mad!’

  The hush of the gallery changed to a tumult of shouts and hurrying footsteps. The drama was mixed with farce. A uniformed attendant, racing across the polished floor, slipped and sprawled headlong. Two German tourists hurled their guidebooks at Miss Richardson. She struck the picture several times, shattering the glass, before she was overpowered. The axe came skidding across the floor. Fiona saw that it was attached to a little chain of safety pins, by which Mary must have secured it inside her sleeve.

  She started forward, but with no clear idea of what she intended. Guy seized her arm. ‘There’s nothing you can do – nothing you ought to do – ’

  Mary had vanished into a scrum of struggling figures, from which she emerged handcuffed. There was a police inspector, his cap askew, demanding importantly: ‘Any more of you women in the gallery?’

  The Canadian answered with cheerful contempt, ‘Oh, I expect so!’

  ‘My God!’ howled the inspector. He rushed off, bellowing, ‘Clear the gallery! Clear the gallery!’

  They heard his voice echoing through the endless rooms, fainter and fainter. Within moments Fiona and Guy were being herded down the staircase with the other visitors and out into Trafalgar Square.

  They had looked forward to their quiet lunch together but they were fated to spend their time in hot argument.

  Fiona flared up in defence of Mary Richardson. ‘But what good has she done?’ Guy demanded. ‘And what harm? Not just to a world masterpiece, but the whole cause of votes for women? These outrages only turn the public against you. Smashing politicians’ windows – and shop windows. Burning cricket pavilions, pouring acid on golf courses – ’

  ‘I don’t like any of those things,’ she admitted unhappily, ‘but property seems to be the only thing the government cares about – the only way to strike at it!’

  ‘You’ll never win if you forfeit public sympathy.’

  ‘Sympathy doesn’t seem much use. Scores of MPs say we have their “sympathy”. When one of them brought in a private bill to give us the vote it passed its second reading with a three-to-one majority. And what happened then? The government blocked it. They can always block anything. Procedures, parliamentary timetables!’ She almost spat the words in her indignation.

  Mrs Pankhurst, she reminded him, had been fighting for twenty-five years, long before either she or Guy was born. Only latterly had she gone over to all this militancy. Out of utter despair.

  Guy began to say that he did sympathize, but remembered how scornfully she had just spoken of sympathy. ‘Thank God I’m not a woman,’ he said with feeling.

  She looked at him across the table and suddenly smiled. ‘Well, I thank God I am. In spite of everything.’

  As they walked along the Strand the newsboys were already selling the midday editions hot from Fleet Street. One headline ran:

  Slasher Mary –

  Suffragette Slashes £45,000 Venus

  Guy attended the court when Mary Richardson appeared before the magistrate. He got a bright-eyed welcome from Belle Isherwood when he squeezed in beside her in the crowded public seats.

  ‘I’ve been away,’ she whispered. Her eyes opened wider when she heard that both he and Fiona had witnessed the scene in the National Gallery.

  Caught in the act, Mary Richardson could hardly deny the charge. She pleaded justification. It had been a protest against Mrs Pankhurst’s arrest in Glasgow.

  She spoke with a calm dignity. ‘I tried to destroy this picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history because the government is destroying Mrs Pankhurst – the most beautiful character in modern history! The nation is either dead or asleep. The government have closed all doors against us.’

  Her eloquent arguments did not save her from a sentence of eighteen months hard labour. Guy tried to comfort Belle as they left the court. ‘The length of the sentence doesn’t mean much. She’ll obviously go straight on hunger-strike – she’ll have a horrible few days until she’s ill enough to be let out.’

  ‘And then there’ll be this dreadful cat-and-mouse business – I don’t think I could bear it, I’d never have the courage.’ In a lighter tone she asked: ‘Have you been to Lady Ottoline’s again?’

  ‘No.’ He hesitated.

  ‘Oh, but you must! She liked you, she could do a lot for your career. If I go next Thursday, will you?’

  He promised. She was right of course. He must think of his career. And he had made a determined start on his next novel. In case Lady Ottoline enquired.

  ‘Fine!’ said Belle. ‘I must fly – we’ve got people to luncheon.’ She waved down a taxi and dived into it. A girl, he thought, with a foot in both worlds. Elegant feet, too.

  He also had a foot in two worlds. The grim world of the suffragettes, all idealism and anger – and the brighter world of laughter and vitality and colour, a constant stimulus to the mind and senses. He was torn between them.

  It was a wild spring, and looked like being an even wilder summer.

  Chapter Eleven

  Meanwhile Fiona, typing tedious documents for Mr Bagshaw, felt unbearably frustrated.

  Mrs Pankhurst, released yet again, was struggling back to health, eager to resume the struggle if she could avoid rearrest. Her whereabouts were unknown. She flitted from place to place, repeating her first performance at Mouse Castle, her bodyguard obstructing the police while she vanished by some prearranged escape route.

  Fiona relied for news on the movement’s penny weekly. She was a volunteer seller and a distributor of leaflets, at any London gathering which she could get to after work. It was all she could do. Unlike some supporters of the cause she had no private means, no sympathetic husband or family. She dared not lose her job.

  When plans were announced for the great demonstration outside Buckingham Palace she decided that she must be there, even though it would be on a Thursday, and in office hours. Mrs Pankhurst had written to the King, informing him respectfu
lly but firmly that she would present herself at his palace gates on May 21st and ask that, as a loyal subject, she be given the chance to deliver the petition to him personally which his Prime Minister had refused to accept.

  It would be ‘absurd and futile’, she wrote, ‘for us to interview the very men … who, in our eyes, have no standing in the matter, because we have not been consulted as to their election to Parliament. We have no power to vote for Members of Parliament, and therefore for us there is no House of Commons. But we have a King, and to him we make our appeal.’

  It was vital that every possible supporter should be mustered for that afternoon. For the first time in all her working life Fiona invented a splitting headache and sought permission to leave early.

  Mr Bagshaw was chivalrous. ‘Of course, of course, Miss Campbell! I see you have all the letters ready for me to sign. Run along, my dear, run along. I trust you will feel better in the morning.’ She thanked him, with secret guilt, and fled.

  Belle was waiting, as arranged, in one of the Charing Cross Road bookshops. ‘Got your sash?’ she asked. Their sashes were better than banners on an occasion like this.

  As they walked towards Piccadilly they discussed the recent House of Lords debate when a bill granting votes for women had been defeated by the government’s large majority. ‘But Daddy voted in favour,’ said Belle. ‘I told him I’d strangle him if he didn’t.’

  Both the Earl and Countess, she said, were sympathetic enough, though they did not approve of militant tactics. They had been horrified by Mary Richardson’s attack on the Rokeby Venus. Luckily the damage to the painting had been much less serious than at first expected, and when the picture restorers had used all their skills it would be back on the wall – only better protected.

  Belle’s parents preferred the law-abiding policy of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. ‘They tell me I’m young and impatient,’ she grumbled. ‘So I am! That other lot will never win us the vote.’