Things a Bright Girl Can Do

  The man turned on her.

  ‘You what?’ he said, but before Nell could answer, she was interrupted by a furious voice.

  ‘You! Here, you! George Cormack! Does your mother know what you’re doing?’

  It was Mrs Cohen, one of the Suffragettes. She grabbed George by the arm, and shook him. ‘Throwing bricks through a poor citizen’s window! Ought to be ashamed of yourself, you ought! And you!’ She turned on Nell.

  Nell said hastily, ‘I weren’t! I were trying to stop them!’

  ‘And a piss-poor job you was making of it, wasn’t you?’ said Mrs Cohen. She glared at the man with the cigar in his mouth. ‘And you can piss off back home, and all!’

  The man looked at her levelly, his eyes lingering on the old VOTES FOR WOMEN badge on her coat collar. He took the cigar out of his mouth and ground it, very deliberately on the pavement.

  ‘Women like you,’ he said slowly, ‘makes me sick to think of yer. Get yourself back home to yer poor kids where you belongs.’

  Then he pulled back his arm and punched Mrs Cohen in the mouth.

  The boys gasped. Mr Danks thrust his children back through the door and shut it on them.

  ‘Oh, you swine,’ he said, almost joyfully, and leapt down the step, poker raised. The man from the pub’s friends surged forward.

  Mrs Cohen yelled, ‘You cowards! Why ain’t you in France, if you cares so much about beating up Germans?’

  Nell leapt into the fray. For the first time in almost a year, she felt alive. This is what it was about! Fists, and knuckles, and all that ju-jitsu the Suffragettes had taught her, all those months ago in Victoria Park. May might sneer at violence, but that was only because she didn’t know how glorious it could be.

  A righteous fury, condensed into the end of a fist.

  At last!

  By the time the policemen arrived, she had bruises all down one side of her stomach, a bleeding hand, and the traditional Suffragette bird’s-nest hair. Mrs Cohen fared worse – three cracked ribs and a foot that she couldn’t walk on for a week. But Nell didn’t care. Mrs Cohen had called her ‘A hero’ and even George and the other boys had been grudgingly admiring. No one else on Coney Lane knew ju-jitsu. Only May had been a bit sniffy – ‘You punched him?’ she’d said, when Nell told her about it – but Nell didn’t even care. As far as she was concerned, it was worth it.

  The Danks closed up their shop and moved out of Poplar. Nell never did find out what happened to them.

  And for the first time, the war felt like something real.

  October

  1915

  Why We Oppose Votes For Men

  .1.

  Because man’s place is in the army.

  .2.

  Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it.

  .3.

  Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them.

  .4.

  Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms and drums.

  .5.

  Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them particularly unfit for the task of government.

  Alice Duer Miller, 1915

  A sunny window-seat, overlooking a quad

  Oriel College

  Oxford

  October 1915

  Dearest Teddy,

  Thank you for your letter, which arrived last week. Your French farmer family sounds wonderful! I love the story about your corporal and the goose – it jolly well serves him right! And I can just picture you making pictures for the little French children. Say ‘salut!’ from me and tell them to keep my best boy safe until he comes home.

  I am now a student! Miss Collis, studying Classics at Somerville College. Except right now we’re all living in Oriel, because Somerville is a soldiers’ hospital. I feel v. queer and grown up and rather as though I were playing a part. I suspect the other girls all feel just the same, but of course no one admits to anything, and we all go about smoking cigarettes and talking a little more loudly than necessary about Great Works of Literature.

  Have been here a week and a half and so far all is well. The girls on my corridor are jolly good sorts. We all said we were sure we would not be up to the work – we shall see! The reading lists are fairly ghastly, I own, but since I fought so hard to get here, I suppose I must just put my head down and get on with it.

  Mother brought the little girls to help see me settled in. We took them for a punt and ices on the Isis. They thought Oxford very grand, and were particularly taken with the RAF aeroplanes, which all take off from Port Meadow. Hetty says she would like to be a student and read all day, Kezia not very taken with the gown and hat, said they made me look a guy (they do, a little, but am v. proud to be wearing them, so do not care). Hetty sends you a kiss and her best love, and wants to know if you have met any Germans yet. Kezia asks me to tell you not to get killed. I told her you had no intention of doing any such thing, but she said to tell you anyway, and so I do. I hope this letter will make you smile and remember,

  Your own,

  Evelyn

  Another Telegram

  THEY’D BEEN AT war for over a year. Nell’s father had been promoted to sergeant, out there in Belgium somewhere. His letters sounded cheerful enough, but then, Dad always did. Dad wasn’t one to grumble. You heard such awful stories about the trenches, but Nell knew, no matter how dreadful things got, Dad would never dream of saying anything that might worry Mum. His letters were full of the excellent rations, the good lads in his platoon, and kisses to the babies. And that was it.

  Once again, the East End Suffragettes had come through for the Swancotts. Miss Pankhurst had opened a toy factory. Most toys in Britain had come from Germany, and were now in short supply. She got several of her art-school friends to design stuffed animals and wooden toys, and the East End women made them up. There was a nursery for the babies and children too small to go to school, which also provided food and milk for children who had been nearly starving to death.

  ‘They pays properly too, Mum!’ said Nell, but her mother didn’t need persuading. She loved Miss Pankhurst, and she adored the nursery. There were more toys there than Johnnie and Siddy had seen in their entire lives, including a real-life rocking horse like something from the story books Nell remembered from Board School. To hear Nell’s mother talk, the nursery might be the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her.

  Nell’s mother was one of the women chosen to stitch up the toys. It was simple enough sewing, and the wages were, of course, good. The Suffragettes were rather lax about work rates and keeping to time; Nell’s mother was used to piecework, and it made a welcome change to be paid by the hour.

  None of the East End ladies had ever run a business before, so there were a few hiccups at first, but generally speaking, the toys were well received. There were baby dolls in all the different colours one found in the East End – black, white and brown – and all sorts of animals beyond the usual nursery bears. Even Selfridges put in an order.

  ‘Just think!’ said Nell’s mother. ‘Dukes and duchesses shop in Selfridges. Perhaps one of them will buy one of our toys for their children!’

  ‘We should put grenades in them,’ said Nell, only half joking.

  Although many of the women had done sewing work before, few had any woodworking experience. Miss Pankhurst had found a German gentleman called Mr Neiderhofer to explain how the German toys were made. Nell grinned a little to herself when she heard about him. It was just like Miss Pankhurst to hire a German. A few of the women muttered to themselves when they heard about his appointment, although of course no one would say anything directly to Miss Pankhurst. And actually, most of them found themselves liking gentle, dignified Mr Neiderhofer. Nell did, when she came in to see where h
er mother worked. Perhaps, she thought, May’s mother might have been more right about the Germans than she cared to admit.

  The money Nell’s mother earned – with the half pay their father sent them – was enough to keep the family solvent. Nell had still not been able to find full-time work, but she picked up bits of day-work and odd-jobs – an afternoon minding a baby here, some work in her uncle’s shop there. It was frustrating, when people were so obviously needed to replace the men who’d gone to the Front, that everyone was still so reluctant to employ women. For the first few months of the war at least, it had seemed that girls were allowed to knit socks or be nurses or nursing assistants, and not much else.

  Bill’s ambitions were similarly frustrated. He was still stuck at a training camp, waiting to go out. Nobody seemed to have realised he was only seventeen. He wrote them short, dull, dutiful letters on the backs of the letters Mum sent. The weather is good. We are not going to France yet. Love to all. Nell was grateful that she didn’t have to worry about him yet. Which made the news, when it came, all the more appalling.

  Nell had picked up another piece of day-work; minding a neighbour’s children while she visited a wounded husband in a London hospital. The telegram was waiting on the table when she came home, she knew as soon as she walked into the door what it said.

  Dad. Her lovely dad had been killed.

  But it wasn’t Dad. It was Bill.

  Bill. Bill who was underage, Bill who needn’t have joined up at all. He hadn’t even made it to France; he’d been killed in an accident on a training exercise. You couldn’t even pretend he’d died for his country, although she supposed he had, technically. Bill. Bill who had cared so much about being a man, and who had only gone because she had said those awful things to him.

  And now he was dead.

  Nell felt numb with it. Her mother had obviously been crying, and so had Bernie and Johnnie; Dot was standing by the table, twisting her hands around her skirts, looking very pale.

  She couldn’t take it in, it didn’t feel real. All she could think of was practical things; someone would have to tell her father (her mother could barely write and her words were dreadfully chicken-scratchings-y, normally she dictated her letters to Bernie or Nell). Someone would have to put the dinner on. Bill’s wages wouldn’t be coming in now, and someone would have to make up that shortfall.

  Bill was dead.

  And it was her fault.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said. And then, ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  And Bernie said, ‘Mum, when I’m grown up, I’ll be a soldier like Bill and won’t I make them sweat for what they done to him?’

  And her mother said, ‘No, you bleeding well will not!’

  And Bernie started to argue, and Nell had a sudden, horrible urge to laugh, because if she’d sat down and imagined the scene: Family Receive Tragic News of Son’s Death, she wouldn’t have imagined anything remotely like this. But then her mother began to weep again, and curse, curse the Kaiser and the government and the Germans and Bill himself, and the tears were pouring down her face so that she quite frightened Nell.

  And Nell was the oldest now. The man of the family.

  Because Bill was dead.

  ‘Mum, please,’ she said. And, to Dot, ‘Here, run and get some brandy from Uncle Jack, can’t you? Mum’s had a shock.’ And Dot, looking somewhat like a rabbit Nell had disturbed once hop-picking in Kent, disappeared out of the door and down the stairs.

  And then Uncle Jack was there, and Mrs O’Farrell, and Mrs O’Farrell’s eldest two girls, and Jeannie from down the road, and Auntie Maudie was making the tea, and Jeannie was cutting the bread and butter for dinner, and someone else was handing Mum a cigarette, and Nell was a child again.

  But she didn’t forget.

  This is my fault, she thought, watching them all crowded into the tiny room.

  And, I’ve got to make it right.

  Though how she might do that, she couldn’t imagine.

  Later, when she crept out of the house and round to May’s to tell her the news, Nell half expected her to be awful about Bill. Not deliberately awful, but just … what Nell secretly thought of as straight-through-a-brick-wall awful. Which was Nell-shorthand for, May was exactly the sort of person who would knock a hole through someone else’s brick wall, if she thought it was the right thing to do, and then when the wall owner tried to stop her, she wouldn’t even apologise. She’d just start trying to convince him she’d been in the right all along.

  Which was what the Suffragettes were like too, of course – some of them literally did blow holes in walls.

  But it was exhausting, sometimes, when it was your girl doing it, and your brother was dead.

  Nell had expected May to say it served Bill right for enlisting, or to tell her this proved how awful the war was (as though she’d somehow failed to notice that wars killed people). But actually May did none of these things. She was properly shocked, and sympathetic, and interested, and she wrote Nell’s mother a letter saying how sorry she was, which Nell hadn’t expected, and she told Mrs Barber (her Mama was out at a committee meeting), and Mrs Barber said it was a shame, and her poor mother, and gave Nell some apple dumplings to take back home to the children.

  Nell should have been relieved, but she found the whole thing deeply uncomfortable. She had wanted to be angry at May, and instead she found herself having to be grateful.

  She hated being grateful, and she particularly hated being grateful to May, who would always have so much more to give than Nell would ever have to return.

  A Sort of Hopelessness

  IT WAS A hard autumn, and a hard winter.

  All summer, Jus Suffragii was full of articles about what a success the Peace Congress had been, but May couldn’t help but be depressed. Perhaps Mrs Barber and the girls at school were right. If people really wanted to blow each other up this much, was it mad for the suffragist women to think that they could stop them?

  The members of the newly formed International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace – ‘What names you women do come up with!’ said Mrs Barber – were optimistic. They agreed that the next thing to do was to persuade the leaders of neutral countries like America to organise peace talks between the warring countries. Representatives from the conference set off to meet with as many government officials as they could. This was rather exciting, even from a distance – May’s mother knew several of the women who were involved in these meetings, and would often greet May cheerfully with announcements like, ‘Good news, darling! Woodrow Wilson’s agreed to see us!’ May often wondered what the girls at school would say if they knew pacifists were industriously travelling all across Europe, meeting with secretaries of state, prime ministers and even the President of the United States. May’s mother seemed very optimistic about their chances too – apparently someone in Sweden had said Sweden would actually organise a peace conference if the Suffragettes could prove the warring countries really would accept peace talks, and since all of the warring countries had apparently said they would, this was a very good sign.

  ‘Imagine!’ she said. ‘If women like us did end the war!’

  ‘They really would have to give us a vote then,’ said May.

  But she found it hard to scrape up much optimism for the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace and their supposed talks. Surely nothing would actually come to anything?

  For Nell, it was a time of bitter, bone-deep unhappiness. After Bill died, a sort of hopelessness had descended on all the Swancotts. Things had been hard before, of course. But you had been fighting for … well, for something. And you knew things would come right in the end, somehow, eventually. You just had to put your head down and push through it.

  Now … well, somehow the heart had gone out of everybody. Mum pretended that everything was still all right, everything was fine.

  ‘And get those dirty boots off my nice clean floor! And stop fighting, for
heaven’s sake, couldn’t anyone get a moment’s peace in here, with all these kids blimming screaming all the time? Can’t you all just get out and let me be!’

  It was like that all the time, or it felt like it. It was exhausting. The little ones felt it too. Dot was so … so angry, always. You asked her to do something and she’d argue with you. ‘Why? Why should I look after the baby? Why can’t you? Why do I have to stay home from school to do the washing? Can’t Nell do it? She doesn’t have a job. Well, can’t Bernie, then?’ Nell had been that little girl herself, when she was Dot’s age (she suspected this was where Dot got it from). She’d never appreciated how irritating she must have been.

  Bernie just went very quiet. Quiet wasn’t a quality that got you very far when there were eight of you – six now – living in two rooms. But Bernie had always been like that. (Nell was quiet too, but when she wanted something, she fought for it. Bernie just worried over it, like a dog with a bone.) He was Nell’s favourite brother, all elbows and knees and round blue eyes. She worried about him. She’d always worried about him.

  ‘All right, Bern?’ she said, and he looked at her over his bread and margarine and said, ‘Nell, is someone going to shoot Dad too?’

  ‘Dad!’ she said. ‘No fear! Them Boers didn’t get him in South Africa, did they? And he’s ever so much older and cleverer now than he were then. I expect them Germans is more worried about him getting them.’

  She smiled at him, but the blue eyes didn’t look persuaded.

  And then, at the beginning of December, Dad was hit. Not dangerously, thank God; a piece of shrapnel had embedded itself in his leg. But it would mean several months in England, in hospital and convalescing. And as long as he was at home, he wouldn’t be earning.

  He’d asked to be taken to a London hospital, but in the usual bureaucratic chaos had somehow ended up in Liverpool. Nell’s mother had managed to scrape together the money for the fare to visit him, but there hadn’t been enough for the children to come too. Nell’s mother said he seemed cheerful enough, only rather worried about the family. He’d sent Bernie and Johnnie cap-badges taken from German prisoners of war, a little wooden peg-doll for Dot, and kisses for all the rest.