Nobody, she thought, in a sudden rage, understood what it was like to be told something was the most important thing in all the world, to follow it, to believe in it, and then to have it pulled away from underneath you.
It didn’t help that she wasn’t at all sure whether her most important thing had been the right to an education, or votes for women, or if, in fact, it had always been Teddy all along.
Cranquettes
FOR MUCH OF the early part of 1915, May’s mother had a new scheme; helping to organise the Women’s Peace Congress.
The Women’s Peace Congress was going to be held in the Hague. Representations were going to be sent from all of the warring countries, and many of the neutral ones too. It wasn’t just going to be suffragists either, although it was mostly the suffragists who were doing the organising. All sorts of women’s organisations had been invited. Women lawyers. Women factory workers. And so on.
‘Mama says,’ said May to Mrs Barber, as she helped her clean the family silver, ‘that the fighting countries couldn’t ask the neutral countries to negotiate peace without looking weak. But women can. We don’t care about looking weak the way men do. Just think! What if we managed to stop the war – women like us?’
‘I’ll believe that when it happens, dearie,’ said Mrs Barber doubtfully. Mrs Barber, May thought, had a very prosaic mind.
To May, the conference was everything wonderful. It was hope, and vindication, and pride, and proof; proof that women could do everything men could do. Stop the war! Why not? Women, talking, peace-making, doing all the things women always did, in homes across the world. Wasn’t that a better way to end a conflict than standing in a trench getting shot at?
This was real peace work, and the thought of it made May blaze with the joy of it. This wasn’t the sort of peace work where you stood aside and let the German soldier blow up the children. This was stopping the gunner, stopping all the gunners, stopping everything.
Nobody else was talking to people on the other side of the war, as far as May could see. Nobody except the women. Imagine if they did make peace!
Wouldn’t that be one in the eye for Barbara?
For most of the first half of 1915, she lived for the conference. She begged her mother to be allowed to address envelopes, fold letters, do whatever needed doing to help. One hundred and eighty women were going to the conference as British representatives, including Nell’s heroine, Sylvia Pankhurst. May’s mother was going too. It was more complicated than it would have been this time last year, due to the introduction of something called a passport. You had to apply for one before you could leave the country; supposedly to stop you travelling to Germany and fraternising with the enemy.
‘But you are going to be fraternising with the enemy,’ said Mrs Barber.
‘I certainly hope so!’ said May’s mother. ‘Don’t worry, though,’ she added, unpinning her hat and letting it drop onto the sideboard. ‘What harm can us women do anyway?’
At first, it seemed as though the British government were going to take this line. But then, a week before the conference, it was announced that all of the women were to be refused permits – the Home Office having decided that it would be ‘inconvenient’ to hold a political conference so close to the war. One of the organisers managed to secure a meeting with the Home Secretary, who agreed to issue passports to twenty-four of the women, not including May’s mother. But there was little time to celebrate. Almost immediately afterwards, it was announced that an Admiralty Order had closed the North Sea to all shipping until further notice.
‘Well!’ said May’s mother. ‘You can’t say the government isn’t taking us seriously now!’
‘You’d think they wanted to be at war,’ said May. But she had to admit that such a public condemnation was rather thrilling.
The newspapers, however, disagreed. The Daily Express ran an article describing the women as ‘cranquettes’ and ‘sorrowful spinsters’. Other newspapers were similarly scathing.
May’s mother was serene. ‘Better to be mocked than ignored,’ she said. ‘Mockery means they’re worried.’
In the end, it was decided that – as it had been promised that passports would be issued to the women – the best thing to do was to send all the delegates to Tilbury, since it was understood that one last boat would still be allowed to leave for Holland. A special train was put on from London, and May and Mrs Barber went to see it off. It was rather exciting to spot all the famous Suffragettes – Mrs Barber was particularly impressed with Lady Ottoline Morrell, the celebrated pacifist. But both of them were left feeling rather depressed when the train had pulled away without them.
‘Next time your mama starts looking for a new project, can we campaign for equal rights to seaside excursions?’ said Mrs Barber.
It seemed, however, that even equality for women was too much to ask for. First the British representatives were told that there would not be enough time to process their passports before the boat sailed. Then they were told not to worry as another boat would be sailing. At last, the passports appeared. But as the Home Secretary handed them over, he informed the women that another Admiralty Order had been issued, and the new boat had now also been cancelled.
Furious, May’s mother and the other British ‘peacettes’ waited in Tilbury. They waited a week. They waited another. They waited while women in the Netherlands laid out the terms on which peace would have to be made, and argued about how women activists might help that peace come to fruition. And in Bow, May waited for news from her mother. She made Mama promise that she would cable just as soon as ever there was good news, even just tiny good news, even if just one delegate was allowed to go, on a sailing boat even, anything.
Just tell me, Mama, promise, she wrote, and her mother promised.
But no cable arrived.
And then the conference was over, and no boat had come.
A dugout in the dark
THE FRONT
Somewhere in France
Darling Evelyn,
I am writing this UNDER FIRE. Other soldiers might faint, or tremble, or wave machine-guns about. NOT ME. I am sitting at this rickety little table, as close to the lamp as I can get, and calmly writing you a love letter. ‘Of what great stuff is that Edward Moran made of!’ you no doubt exclaim. I don’t suppose you had the slightest idea what a dashing young fellow you were engaged to. Well, to be frank, neither did I. Maybe all that yelling they did at basic training has done me some good.
Heavens! That was rather a close one. They make a tremendous noise coming down, and all the earth shakes, and things sort of leap up into the air; you have to keep a tight hold on the ink jar and the lanterns, or you risk starting a fire. It’s rather thrilling, actually. To be at the centre of the action at last, after so long hanging around at the edges. Reminds me of the time I was finally allowed up to bat at prep school after two terms as Third Reserve. I was so nervous, I whacked the ball straight up in the air, it landed right in the wicket-keeper’s hands, and that was the end of my brilliant cricket career.
Thanks for the chocolate and the slippers – they have been much admired! Here is a picture of me protecting the Line in the nicest slippers this side of Paris.
They’re calling for me – I’d better go.
Best love,
Teddy
The Lusitania
THE BEGINNING OF May, and the war had suddenly come much closer to home for Nell.
Since the start of 1915, the newspapers had been full of the new submarine warfare. Not content with firing on naval shipping, U-boats had begun attacking merchant ships carrying food and other supplies to Britain. Everyone in Poplar agreed that this was just the sort of thing you would expect from Germans. May pointed out that we were doing exactly the same thing in the Adriatic, and how exactly was a naval campaign designed to starve German civilians any better?
May had a very irritating habit of popping up in Nell’s head when Nell least wanted her.
Nell heard about the
sinking of the Lusitania at work. She’d picked up a week’s worth of day-work in a bottle factory, and was busy, like the other girls, putting on her hat ready for the journey home. The late editions of the newspapers were being called in the street. The forewoman came into the hallway holding the paper.
‘Have you heard the news?’ she said.
They crowded around her. LUSITANIA TORPEDOED BY GERMAN PIRATE, the headline read. A passenger ship. Not even a British passenger ship; a neutral American liner. Shot at without warning by an enemy submarine.
‘There’s a thousand people dead, they think!’ the forewoman said.
A thousand people. The girls couldn’t comprehend it. It was like the Titanic all over again, but this time it was people who’d done this thing. The war. Nell could hear May’s voice in her head: Now can’t you see what an awful thing war is?
But the other factory girls took a different view of things.
‘It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is!’ said Betty, who worked next to Nell. ‘How could anyone torpedo a passenger ship? With women and children aboard!’
‘That’s just what them Boche is like,’ said another girl, with a ferocity which surprised Nell. ‘They don’t care about people – they just want to win the war. They’s all the same. We have to show them we won’t stand for it, that’s all!’
May’s voice in the back of Nell’s head was asking how exactly vowing to fight a war until ‘the last man standing’ – as the British government had done – showed a concern for human life. Nell thought May was probably wrong about this – torpedoing women and children was a different thing to killing soldiers who were, after all, trying to kill you – but she was still taken aback by the other girl’s words.
‘Not all Germans is like that,’ she said cautiously, thinking of May.
But the girl wouldn’t listen. ‘They ain’t like us,’ she said firmly. ‘They ain’t been brought up civilised like what we has.’
The view in Coney Lane when Nell went home was somewhat more sanguine. Nell’s mother, rather predictably said, ‘Ain’t it a shame?’ and ‘Them poor little kiddies.’ But, perhaps influenced by Miss Pankhurst and those bits of the Woman’s Dreadnought Nell had brought home, she said very little about the Germans.
Mrs O’Farrell, bringing up the post, muttered rather darkly that, ‘Someone ought to teach them what’s what,’ but no one paid her much attention – it was lunchtime, and the kitchen was in its usually Sunday-lunchtime chaos, with six people in the dining room at once, all trying to eat, all taking up more space than there really was to fill.
After lunch, Nell, feeling restless, wandered out into the street. The children were playing soldiers again, marching up and down, with broom handles for rifles tucked under their arms. Nell wanted to tell them that it wasn’t a game, that their brothers and fathers really were dying in a real war.
But probably they knew that already.
The older boys gathered on the street corner were talking about the Lusitania. Nell hopped onto the wall beside them. It was much the same sort of things the factory girls had been saying, but here there was another undertone. That same line Mrs O’Farrell had said: ‘Someone ought to teach them a lesson.’
And this time the boys were nodding in agreement.
‘Take Mrs Danks,’ George Cormack was saying. ‘I never trusted her. What’s she doing in this country, anyway? Why doesn’t she go back home where she belongs?’
Mrs Danks was the German wife of Mr Danks, the tobacconist on the corner. Nell said, fairly, ‘Well, she’s married to Mr Danks. And she got kids here, ain’t she? And anyway, they doesn’t let people go to Germany any more, you know they doesn’t.’
‘I bet they’d let Huns go back to Germany if they wanted to,’ said George. ‘Why! I’d be ashamed to live in enemy land, if I were her. I reckon she’s a spy.’
The other boys made noises of assent.
Nell hooted. ‘A spy! What’s she got to spy on in Poplar?’
‘There’s all sorts,’ said Robbie Farr, stoutly. ‘There’s … there’s heaps of soldiers in Poplar now, and … and there’s morale … Huns is always wanting to know about morale on the Home Front, ain’t they? And anyway –’ and this was indignant – ‘even if she ain’t a spy, that ain’t the point. They ain’t like us, Germans. George is right. We ought to show them they ain’t wanted here no more.’
There was more murmuring from the boys, but this time there was a sort of purpose to it. George got up and picked up a stone from the road. He tossed it reflectively from hand to hand.
As though it was a signal, Robbie got up and picked up another stone, a bigger one. The other boys stood too, a little warily. Nell could see one or two of them glancing at each other uncertainly – Are we really going to do this? Were they really going to do this? They weren’t, were they? But there was something of the same feeling as one got before a Suffragette action, the same tense, communal waiting, the same sense of people nerving themselves up. Nell had waved banners while women had thrown stones through windows, and flung themselves on policemen in the hope of being arrested. She recognised the tension, and then the glorious exhilaration of release. It was like fighting when you were a kid. It was like finally telling someone what you really thought of them. It was the joy of doing something violent, and brutal, and forbidden. It was wonderful, but it was dangerous. It could get you killed, and if it didn’t, it could get someone else killed.
The boys didn’t know that, though. They stood, looking warily at each other, and at George, who was still tossing his stone from hand to hand. After a moment, he moved away, almost idly, as though his mind were on something else altogether, towards the high street. The other boys followed.
Nell, rather unwillingly, hopped off the wall and joined them.
‘What’s you doing?’ she said, although she knew the answer, of course she did. ‘George? This ain’t funny.’
‘Who’s laughing?’ said Robbie. George didn’t answer.
They moved, with the same dreamy, unspoken air, onto the high street. Most of the shops were closed of course, it being a Sunday, although the pub on the corner was still open for luncheon, and there was a clump of older men outside with beer tankards, watching the passing traffic and laughing. A newspaper boy passed by, still calling out about the Lusitania. A motor omnibus went past, with a lady conductor on the back step, rammed full of people coming back from work. Most of the London ’buses had gone to France, Nell knew. Right now they were full of soldiers, travelling to the Front. The thought made her rather sad. Even the ’buses had gone to war.
The boys had picked up more stones and rocks along the way. There was a tumbledown wall by the church which provided them with several pockets full. Nell had had stones thrown at her before. They hurt if they hit you, but mostly they were easier to avoid than the wet rubbish, which stuck in your hair and stained your clothes. But she knew other Suffragettes who had not been so lucky. Miss Urwin had had her arm badly broken where a stone had hit it. And she had never seen eight boys all going against one person before. It worried her.
‘You ain’t going to throw them stones at Mrs Danks, is you?’ she said, uneasily.
‘They killed all them kids on the Lusitania,’ said Robbie. ‘They didn’t care, did they? This is war. It ain’t a picnic.’
‘But you ain’t at war with Mrs Danks,’ said Nell. She heard, suddenly, May’s voice in her head, talking about the Germans who had been sent to internment camps. They think they’re the enemy. And she’d replied, They is the enemy. Which they were, of course. But not Mrs Danks.
The Danks’ tobacconist’s was next to another pub. It was closed, of course, but there was a light on in the flat above the shop.
‘They’re in,’ said Nell.
‘Good,’ said George. Then he drew back his arm and flung the stone through the window.
The window shattered with a glorious SMASH! People passing in the street stopped to look, but no one intervened. The younger boys chee
red. One – a year or so older than Bernie – threw another stone through another pane. Another SMASH. Tremendous. Nell shivered. Oh, she’d missed this.
‘Filthy Boche!’ shouted George, and the other boys joined in.
‘Hun-lover!’
‘Sausage-eater!’
‘Baby-killer!’
‘Stop it!’ cried Nell.
The door to the flat opened, and Mr Danks came out. He was a large, red-faced man, and he was holding a poker in what he obviously hoped was a threatening manner.
‘What the bleeding hell do you think you’re doing?’ Mr Danks said.
The boys quietened. For the first time, they began to look uneasy. They glanced at each other, looking for a leader. Robbie said, boldly, ‘Tell your wife to go back home.’
‘She is home,’ said Mr Danks. He stepped forward and the boys retreated. Perhaps that was all that was needed. Perhaps nothing was going to happen after all. Behind Mr Danks in the dark hallway, Nell could see the pale faces of several children, including a boy a little older than Johnnie, with thick yellow hair. Did their father know they were there?
But now the men from the pub had seen what was happening. One, a large man with a reddish beard and a tattoo in the shape of an anchor, came over to them. He reached into the tobacconist’s window and, with a quiet, but rather menacing deliberateness, pulled out a pack of cigars.
‘The spoils of war, eh, boys?’ he said. He opened the packet, pulled out a cigar and stuck it in his mouth. Then, with the same deliberate calm, he struck a match and lit it.
‘Oh, you can’t!’ Nell cried. ‘Stop it, can’t you? What’s Mrs Danks ever do to you?’
Another child’s face had appeared at the upstairs window. The man shook his fist at it. He picked up a stone and aimed it at the window where the child was. The face ducked down. The man flung the stone and the window imploded. Nell said, ‘You brute!’