Things a Bright Girl Can Do

  Later, they sat together on the sofa. May couldn’t tell if she was comfortable, or awkward, or happy, or anxious, or safe, or a confusing muddle of all these things and more.

  ‘What’s it like?’ said May. ‘The munitions factory?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Nell. ‘I gets me own bed.’ She grinned a little shyly at May. ‘We’re all in rows, like a barracks. And the food’s disgusting. But the other girls is nice.’ Her grin widened. ‘There’s a football team.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘There is. Girls’ football. Munitionette’s league.’ She looked delighted at May’s incredulity. ‘I’m a centre forward.’

  ‘I bet you are,’ said May. ‘You always were forward.’ But she felt rather wistful. In two years, Nell had left home, got a job, set up a new life of her own. And what had May done? Played a nymph in the school play, distributed some handbills, failed to get to the Netherlands and failed to end the war.

  ‘Go on,’ said Nell, teasing. (She said it like a Dickens character. ‘G’arn!’) ‘What have you been doing – learning French like a good girl? Or have you left school now?’

  It was as though she’d read May’s thoughts. But May didn’t mind. She wouldn’t, actually, have wanted to sleep in a narrow bed in a dormitory full of factory girls. She would have hated to work in a munitions factory. She could, if it came to that, have left school herself if she’d wanted to.

  ‘No, I’m still there,’ she said mildly. ‘I’m leaving at the end of term.’

  ‘And then sit around waiting for a nice young man to marry?’

  She was teasing, but May answered her directly.

  ‘I shall never marry,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be a schoolteacher. I’m going to work in a Board School, just for a few years at first. It’s all arranged. And then I’m going to start a school of my own. It’s going to be co-educational; just a small one to start with, but it’ll get bigger. My father was a headmaster, you know. I thought I could be the same. And the girls can learn science, and Latin, and the boys can do needlework, and I shall teach them all that they can grow up to be whatever they want to be. It’s going to be simply marvellous.’

  ‘All right for some,’ said Nell. ‘You can’t be whatever you want to be if you comes from where I come from. You get a job in a factory, and count yourself lucky.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said May, though she knew it was easy for her to say.

  ‘Well,’ said Nell. ‘Actually, I …’ And then she stopped.

  ‘What?’

  But Nell shook her head. ‘Don’t matter,’ she said. She was building up her walls again, May saw. Nell was always such a hidden sort of person. She tried not to let herself mind.

  They were quiet, sitting together on the sofa, their hands not quite touching. May said, ‘Do you want …? I mean, are we, could we …?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Nell raised her eyebrows. May flushed. She supposed it was a ridiculous thing to ask.

  ‘It’s not that I ain’t flattered,’ Nell said. ‘But … well … I got a girl already.’

  ‘Oh.’ And then, ‘Oh! Is she nice?’

  ‘Yeh.’ And Nell grinned all over her face. ‘She’s a centre half,’ she said. Her grin widened. ‘She’s going to bleeding kill me when I tell her I kissed you.’

  May had thought she’d got over losing Nell. It had been so long since she’d seen her, and she’d changed so much. But just now, right at this moment, it was as though she were fifteen again. Evidently there was still an inconveniently large part of her that minded.

  Nell caught her expression, and, surprisingly, seemed almost amused by it.

  ‘I never knew you cared so much,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ said May. ‘What a fool you were.’

  A Vote

  THE NINETEENTH OF June, 1917, was a Tuesday. Evelyn, who had struggled to the end of her Second Year Mods the week before, had spent all morning fagging around town looking for oil and soap, and what felt like all afternoon trying to make sense of Thucydides while standing in a queue for fish – fish, of all things! She had done very badly in the Mods, although not, she thought, badly enough to fail entirely, and was already beginning to panic at the thought of next year. And then it had begun to rain, and cycling up Headington Hill, a coal lorry had gone through a puddle and sprayed her with muddy water, and she was so tired, she wanted to weep.

  When she got home, Teddy was sitting by the oil stove in the kitchen, reading the newspaper. He smiled as she came in.

  ‘Look!’ he said. ‘Did you see?’ And he handed her the paper. The Representation of the People Act had been passed by the House of Commons. Universal male suffrage – or as near enough as made no difference – and votes for women over thirty who met a property requirement, or were graduates of certain universities like Oxford and Cambridge, and therefore got an extra vote. (Everyone who’d gone to these universities got an extra vote. Not just women. It was very odd.) Evelyn knew all about it, of course. College had been full of it all last week.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, glancing at the headline and throwing it back to Teddy. ‘You’ve got a vote.’ She didn’t mean it to sound bitter, but it did. Under the previous law, Teddy would not have been eligible to vote in an election; their tiny cottage would have failed the property requirement. Now he had a vote, or would once the bill went through the House of Lords, probably sometime in 1918. And she wouldn’t. Not until she was thirty and she and Teddy were no longer living in quite such desperate circumstances, or until she graduated, if she ever did.

  Teddy looked hurt.

  ‘You might be a bit pleased,’ he said. ‘I bought you this.’ And he gave her a little posy of flowers. Pansies, in white and violet, and a handful of green leaves. Suffrage colours.

  Evelyn took the posy and, to her horror, felt the tears rising behind her eyes. She turned away so that Teddy shouldn’t see them, muttering an angry thank you. Teddy, however, was still aggrieved.

  ‘There’s no need to get in a wax,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be happy, that’s all. I’ve been waiting for you to come home so we could be happy together.’

  ‘For pity’s sake!’ she cried. ‘Just chuck it, can’t you!’

  And the tears were leaking out of her eyes, and running down her cheeks. He stared at her in astonishment.

  ‘Why, you’re blubbing!’ he said, which only made Evelyn cry harder. All those long, weary months of unhappiness, of trying to crib for Mods in half-an-hours squeezed from looking after the house, all the constant worry about money, the snide remarks from the charwoman about plates left unwashed and the mess they never managed to get on top of, the darns in her gloves and the holes in her stockings painted over with boot-polish, all the luncheon parties and tennis parties and boating parties she never managed to attend. All this unhappiness seemed to come to a head. She sat on the chair, rested her head on the kitchen table, and sobbed.

  ‘I say,’ Teddy said, watching her anxiously. ‘Steady on, old man. Look, you’d better have my handkerchief, it’s bigger than yours. Goodness, you are having a good howl, aren’t you? Whatever’s the matter?’

  And Evelyn tried to explain, between sobs, that once upon a time she’d thought that being an equal citizen was the most important thing in the world, but now having the vote didn’t seem to mean anything at all, and life was just hard, all the time, and how miserable the endless worrying about food, and coal, and rent, and study was.

  ‘And it just goes beastly on and on,’ she wept. ‘And I never have enough money, no matter how carefully I plan. And I know it’s not your fault about your lungs, Teddy darling, I really do, but I hate looking after people. And I’m rotten at it, I know I am. I just wish – I wish—’ But what she wished, even she didn’t know. To be seventeen again? God, no. To not have married Teddy? But she didn’t wish that either, exactly. Teddy belonged to her now. She couldn’t imagine a world which didn’t have him in it. Last year, when a world without Teddy in it had been a terrifyingly like
ly possibility, was still too close and awful.

  ‘I wish this ghastly war had never happened,’ she said, instead, and began sobbing all over again, which was absurd, because what did she have to complain about, really, compared to so many other people? But Teddy didn’t seem to mind. He patted her arm.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘my darling idiot. This won’t last for ever. Even the war won’t last for ever.’

  Evelyn sniffled.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but everyone says we’ll keep on going until we’re down to the last man standing. It’s hardly cheering, is it?’

  She was thinking of Kit in France, and Teddy’s brother Stephen, who was in Palestine.

  ‘Buck up,’ said Teddy. He put on a mock-indignant face. ‘It might not come to that. We might win, you know.’

  It wasn’t funny, but Evelyn gave a hiccupy laugh.

  ‘And,’ said Teddy, ‘next year you’ll be able to work. That’ll help.’

  ‘Work!’ said Evelyn. ‘Doing what? Civil service work? I couldn’t live in London, and leave you here on your own. What’d you do when you got ill? I can’t even teach, now I’m married. I might work in an office, I suppose, if I learnt to type.’

  ‘I can’t see you as a secretary,’ said Teddy. He was looking at her fondly. ‘But you’ll think of something. I always knew if either of us was going to do something important, it was going to be you.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Evelyn was distressed. ‘What about your drawings?’

  ‘Oh …’ Teddy shrugged. ‘They’re all right. But they won’t last. Not like the sort of thing you might do, if you wanted to.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Evelyn. His certainty astonished and bewildered her.

  ‘How should I know?’ He smiled at her. ‘Organising something, probably. Look how well you organise me.’

  ‘Organising! Organising what?’

  ‘Search me! Something, though. A business? An army?’ His smile widened. ‘A revolution?’

  ‘Juggins,’ said Evelyn, but his optimism was cheering. ‘You need money for businesses. And revolutions, I expect.’

  ‘That’s true enough. You’d have to talk to Father about that. He’s got heaps of friends who are rolling in it. I bet they’d love to invest money in a plucky Suffragette enterprise. It would be a hell of a thing to puff about at the club.’

  ‘Don’t be a goop,’ said Evelyn. ‘People who are rolling in it don’t invest money in business ideas just so they can puff about them in clubs. If they do, they tend to stop rolling pretty sharpish.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Teddy. ‘It had better be a good business idea then, hadn’t it? Really, though, Father’s a brick when it comes to things like this. I’d much rather ask him for a business investment than for money to pay my rotten doctor’s bills.’

  He reached over and took her hand. She gave him a shaky smile. She rather liked the thought of herself as a business-woman. She could run a respectable employment agency, perhaps. Or a training college. Or something that gave spinster aunts more interesting jobs than being companions. It must be possible.

  ‘I know I’m a brute to you …’ Teddy was saying, and she realised with a start that she ought to be listening.

  ‘Oh, Teddy. Darling. You couldn’t be a brute if you tried. I’m the one who ought to be apologising. None of this is your fault at all.’

  ‘It’s my fault we got married,’ he said mournfully. ‘I knew it was a bad idea at the time, only I was so beastly selfish. You could be living in a nice icy room in Oriel …’

  ‘Getting sent down for sneaking out after curfew to meet dashing young lieutenants in alleyways …’

  ‘I’m serious!’ said Teddy.

  ‘So am I,’ said Evelyn. She felt suddenly enormously fond of him. She leant across and kissed him, on the mouth. He looked pleased.

  ‘What was that for?’ he said.

  ‘Because I love you, you chump,’ said Evelyn. ‘And because you’re quite right, of course. You usually are.’

  ‘Oh.’ He said. ‘Jolly good.’ And he kissed her back.

  February

  1918

  Representation of the People Act 1918 before the House of Lords

  ‘WHAT DO WE want? What is the goal?’ said Ann Veronica.

  ‘Freedom! Citizenship! And the way to that – the way to everything – is the Vote.’

  Ann Veronica said something about a general change of ideas.

  ‘How can you change people’s ideas if you have no power?’ said Kitty Brett …

  ‘It seems to me that many of a woman’s difficulties are economic.’

  ‘That will follow,’ said Kitty Brett. ‘That will follow.’

  She interrupted as Ann Veronica was about to speak again, with a bright contagious hopefulness. ‘Everything will follow,’ she said.

  Ann Veronica, H.G. Wells

  Chips

  MAY’S MOTHER HAD gone down to Parliament with some of her friends to wait for the news. She had wanted May to come too: ‘It’s history, darling!’

  But May said she couldn’t possibly miss work.

  ‘I’ve got a job, Mama. I can’t just chuck it in whenever I feel like it.’

  And it wasn’t history anyway, not yet. The Lords might vote against it, after all. Although everyone seemed to think that it would pass.

  May was working as an assistant schoolmistress at a little Board School in Bow. She taught in the most junior class; solemn little scraps of five and six in starched white pinafores and flannelette petticoats, and boys in little grey caps. The work was simple enough, teaching them their ABCs and arith- metic, and how to sit quietly and listen when spoken to. It amused her to think of Nell in a class like this, a fierce, anxious little thing in her brother’s breeches.

  She was finding things out. She was finding out that she was good at teaching. She was finding out how much she liked it. You could sign endless petitions against conscription, and conscription still happened. But if a child came to you not knowing how to write her name, and left you knowing it … Well! That was something. You could point to it and say, I did that.

  She finished work mid-afternoon on the day of the vote, and stayed behind in the little classroom, tidying up ready for tomorrow, catching up on the day’s marking. Her mother was going on to a party arranged by one of her Fabian friends; May knew just the sort of gathering it would be, lots of cigarette-smoke, and earnest women with severe haircuts and sensible shoes, discussing politics and the various factions of the suffrage movement, and complaining loudly about everything that was wrong with the bill.

  She finished her marking, locked up the classroom and went to catch the omnibus home. A newspaper boy went past, calling the evening edition. May caught sight of the headline and grinned to herself. Good-o.

  The omnibus conductress was a young woman a few years older than herself.

  ‘Did you hear about the bill, in the Lords?’ said May, and the girl grinned at her.

  ‘Too bloody right I did,’ she said. ‘About time, is all!’

  The omnibus was rammed, as usual. May stood clutching the ceiling strap, looking out of the windows at the people going by. None of the women looked as though being enfran- chised meant very much to them.

  She was gazing absently at the passers-by, wondering what Mrs Barber had managed to scrape together for dinner, when suddenly she stiffened.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she gasped, fumbling for her bag. ‘I’m sorry! I need to get out! I need to get out at the next stop!’

  There were some grumbles from the other passengers, but they parted to let her through and off. May scrambled out and, gathering together her skirts, ran back along the pavement to the figure she’d seen from the window; a young woman in a man’s suit, her broad back, her easy, male saunter.

  ‘Nell!’

  Nell turned. She looked different, May thought, and for a moment she couldn’t work out why. Then she realised and she began to grin. She wasn’t wearing Bill’s old clothes any more. Bill had been
long and lanky while Nell was short and squat, so his clothes had never sat right on her frame. But someone – her mother? – had made these clothes for Nell, long trousers and a man’s jacket and shirt. Proper swank! May thought, and began to grin, and Nell, catching her happi- ness, grinned back.

  ‘Nell!’ said May again. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Got a job,’ said Nell, and her grin widened. ‘In Mission to Seamen, at the docks, like.’ And it widened again. ‘Miss Swancott, secretary. That’s me!’

  She beamed at May, and May, delighted, beamed back.

  ‘Oh, jolly well done,’ she said. And then, ‘Do you want some chips?’

  They sat on the wall outside the fish and chip shop in Bow. They ate chips out of the newspaper and drank lemonade out of the bottle. The headmaster at May’s school would have died of shock, May thought, if he’d known.

  ‘Votes for women,’ said Nell. ‘Well. Some women. You, probably.’

  ‘And you,’ said May. ‘Why not?’ She smiled at Nell, a proud smile that had nothing in it besides pride. ‘I’m just going to be a school ma’am,’ she said. ‘You could end up anything.’

  Nell snorted, but she seemed pleased. She took another mouthful of lemonade and gave May a sly, sideways glance. ‘Did you read what them newspapers was saying about the vote?’ she said. ‘That it were a – a thank you prize for all the war work women did? Being nurses and that.’

  ‘Huh!’ said May. ‘Mama says politics is all about finding excuses for doing things you were going to do anyway. Everyone knows they would have had to give us the vote eventually. She says the war just gave them something pretty to say so it didn’t look like they’d lost. But doesn’t it make you furious? All those years and years of work we did, and who gets the credit? Mrs Pankhurst and all her lot! Shaming men, calling them cowards – she’s a coward, herself! She was just as much for peace as the rest of us were for years and years and years! And then as soon as the war started – what did she do? Started handing out white feathers in the street and telling everyone to join up! And now they’re saying the vote’s thanks to women like her!’