‘And me and all,’ said Nell. ‘I’m a war-worker. What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?’
‘Tried to stop the bloody thing,’ said May. She took the lemonade bottle from Nell and tipped it into her mouth. ‘It’ll be us they’ll remember, anyway,’ she said. ‘In a hundred years. They won’t teach schoolchildren about the munitionettes and the women who threw stones. It’ll be the peacemakers who’ll be celebrated.’
‘Peacemakers!’ said Nell, scornfully. ‘Ha! It’s people like that Emily Wilding Davison and them soldiers what sacrifice themselves to save their wounded comrades what get remem- bered. Except they won’t remember Miss Wilding Davison either, I bet. Women fighting men ain’t heroes, is they? Fighting for freedom for the government, that’s heroic. Fighting for freedom against it – not bloody likely!’ She spat on the pave- ment to show exactly what she thought of those future historians. ‘They won’t teach about us at all,’ she said. ‘History ain’t folk like us. It’s kings and queens and Mr Lloyd George and swells like that.’
‘That’s what you think,’ said May, with the queer inner certainty that had always been hers, right from a little girl. ‘History’s about everyone. We made history, Nell. You and I.’
Historical Note
MOST OF THE suffrage scenes in this book, including the march on Buckingham Palace, the Women’s Peace Congress, the cost-price restaurant, the toy factory and Sylvia Pankhurst’s escape from the Bow Baths Hall, are based on real events. I have, however, moved them around, and altered a few timescales to suit the story (I don’t think there were any Albert Hall meetings in 1914, for example).
In Britain, women gained a limited right to vote in 1918, and voting rights on the same terms as men in 1928. Over the last century, more and more countries have given women the vote; the most recent was Saudi Arabia in 2015. Today, the only country in the world where women do not have suffrage is the Vatican City. A new Pope is elected by cardinals, all of whom are men.
Rights for gay and lesbian people have taken much longer to be realised. Male homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967. Gay marriage became legal in England, Wales and Scotland in 2014.
They say that stealing from one author is plagiarism, but stealing from several is inspiration. I was inspired by many books while researching Things a Bright Girl Can Do, but a few deserve special mention. Evelyn’s experience of the build-up to the Battle of the Somme is taken from Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth. The depiction of a hunger strike is based on Sylvia Pankhurst’s harrowing account in The Suffragette Movement. The effects of the war on the East End are taken from Pankhurst’s The Home Front, while much of May’s story comes from Anne Wiltshire’s Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War. The descriptions of drawing-room meetings, walking the streets in sandwich boards and selling Votes for Women come from Evelyn Sharp’s Rebel Women, and the account of life as a tax resister from her Unfinished Adventure. The description of a lock-up and a Black Maria come – amongst other places – from George Orwell’s Clink. And Nell’s storyline draws much from Stephen’s in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.
The title is a homage to 301 Things a Bright Girl Can Do, a real 1914 book which teaches bright girls, amongst other things, how to build stage carpentry, make a photocopier, and cremate themselves alive as a Christmas entertainment. I hope its authors would have approved of the things my bright girls do.
Acknowledgements
THIS BOOK BEGAN with my editor, Charlie Sheppard, who suggested I might like to write a novel about the Suffragettes. You were quite right. Thank you for your patience, your enthusiasm, and your old-fashioned insistence on getting the book as good as it possibly could be. Thanks also to my agent, Jodie Hodges, for enabling me to have a career as bonkers as this. I feel grateful for it every day.
Thanks to Beamish, the Living Museum of the North; May’s house is based on one of your terraces. To Helen Pankhurst for reading the novel in manuscript form, and for all your kind comments. To John Harris for lending me your copy of 301 Things a Bright Girl Can Do. And to all the authors, friends and Twitter followers who listened to several years of my moaning and enthusing about the Suffragettes. Your enthusiasm for this book has been incredibly heartening.
To all the people who looked after my baby son while I sat in a room typing: Jane Nicholls, Celia Harris, John Harris, Pita Harris, Rebecca Waiting. Thank you. And to Tom, for doing the same things I thank you for every time, on far less sleep.
Sally Nicholls, Things a Bright Girl Can Do
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