London

  Mr Gorham Dogget’s visit had certainly put things in such a whirl. Three days after Christmas, her son was summoned to the Savoy and given a great pile of legal documents to work on. As for Arnold, she had never seen him so busy. She hoped it was all right at his age, but he seemed very happy.

  “These Americans have such bold dreams,” he told her. “I wish I could have worked for men like this one all my life.”

  But the truly astounding thing was that the very next day, the Bostonian had asked her brother-in-law Penny if his son would like to accompany him and his family on their cruise.

  “Just up sticks at the drop of a hat, take the boat from Southampton and be off for three months – down the Nile!” Harriet Penny had told her excitedly. “I do believe he means our son to keep his daughter company,” she added. “And he’s going!”

  “Oh, my dear!” said Esther in awe. “We shall be getting quite above our station.”

  Sadder, even a little worrying, was that just after the New Year the Cutty Sark had returned, beating all opposition easily while so far no word had come of the Charlotte Rose. “He’ll be all right,” her sister Charlotte had said of her husband when Esther had gone out to Camberwell to see her. “He always comes home.” But Esther could see that Charlotte was worried.

  Least important, though strangest, had been the tiny incident that had taken place three days before. Though it fascinated him less than sewers and electric trains, Arnold Silversleeves had been delighted by the coming of the telephone in the last decade. In the capital, amongst the richer sort, the new invention had spread rapidly and Arnold had been eager to get one as soon as there was an exchange serving Hampstead. Many provincial cities could not be reached yet but, as he assured her, “it’s the thing of the future”.

  But who, she wondered, could the strange female voice be who had called three days before:

  “Mrs Silversleeves?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you be the daughter of the late Mr Silas Dogget, of Blackheath?”

  As soon as Esther answered yes, the caller had hung up. She was just wondering about it for the hundredth time when the doorbell rang, and a moment later, the maid announced: “There’s a Miss Lucy Dogget to see you, ma’am.”

  Lucy had insisted that she could not state her business until they were alone. Esther had wondered if she should refuse to see her, but her curiosity got the better of her, and the quietly dressed old woman seemed harmless enough. Lucy had spent two days searching and borrowing enough clothes from the families she knew to make a respectable appearance. She had even borrowed a pair of boots from the vicar’s housekeeper – a size too small, so that she could almost weep with the pinching pain after walking a mile from the bus. But in her grey coat, black hat, simple black dress and clean brown stockings, she could have passed for a respectable housekeeper or lady’s maid in quiet retirement.

  “I wanted to see you alone,” she explained, “because I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

  She told her story simply and when she had finished Esther Silversleeves gazed at her in horrified silence. She did not doubt Lucy’s tale, but it opened up before her such a terrible abyss that she had to grip the arms of the chair.

  “The rich relation, you mean, was. . . .”

  “Up at Blackheath. Very fine gentleman he was, I must say. You must have been very proud of him.”

  “Yes. But. . . .” Esther gazed at her with dread. “You said your little brother died on the river. . . .”

  Just for a second Lucy looked into her eyes with perfect understanding before dropping her gaze to the floor. “That was ever such a long time ago,” she said softly. “Not sure I even remember it.”

  The dark chasm was there: the faint splash of an oar in the fog, the dull thump of a body, things Esther had scarcely known, but always dreaded. A cold, damp nightmare, invading the respectable house by Hampstead Heath. Esther thought of Arnold, of her sons, of young Penny cruising the Nile, of the Bulls, of Lord St James. And of Silas the dredger. For a moment she lost her voice. At last, hoarsely, she asked: “Do you need money?”

  Lucy shook her head. “No. I didn’t come to ask for money. I wouldn’t do that. No, it’s a decent place the girl needs. In service, you see. In a decent house, where she’ll be safe and looked after. I hoped perhaps you might know somewhere. That’s all. I didn’t come to ask for anything more than that.”

  “How long is it since you came to see my father?” Esther asked at last.

  “Thirty-eight years.”

  “You must have known great hardship.”

  “Yes, truly I have,” said Lucy. And then, taking herself completely by surprise, she suddenly broke down, and for a moment could do nothing except lean forward in her chair, her hands gripping her knees through her old black dress, and her body quietly shaking as she murmured: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “She shall be safe. She shall come here,” said Esther Silversleeves, greatly to her own astonishment.

  For a man who always looked immaculate, it had to be said that the Earl of St James did not look quite himself that day. He had pulled on a greatcoat with shoulder capes over his open shirt, crammed a bowler hat on his head and seized a red silk scarf which he absent-mindedly wound round his neck as he ran out of the door and hailed a hansom cab. He was in such a state he even forgot his keys. Barnikel and the Charlotte Rose had just arrived, three weeks late.

  The last month had been grim for St James. There had been the embarrassing business of Nancy. A gentleman was not supposed to go back on his word, but the marriage, of course, could not have gone forward. He had written her a letter suggesting that something in his own past made it necessary – indeed, though he did not say what, he implied it was only decent – to withdraw. He could have said he was penniless, too, but he was so furious about the whole thing that he was damned if he would. He comforted himself with the reflection that, having lost his fortune, the Bostonian was unlikely to appear to embarrass him in London again. The only mystery had been a rumour, shortly afterwards, that Mr Dogget had gone to the Nile after all.

  As the days passed he waited anxiously for news of the clippers. First had come the crushing blow that the Cutty Sark had been sighted coming up the coast of Kent; then her arrival in the Port of London, and the knowledge that he had lost his bet. Then, day after day, the wait without news when he wondered if he had lost the vessel and his friend Barnikel too.

  At the wharf it did not take Barnikel long to explain. Sadly the old mariner told him how, trying to outstrip the Cutty Sark, he had got caught in a storm, lost a mast and had to put in to a South American port for a refit. “We were ahead of her once,” he said defensively. And glancing across to where the sleek, three-masted Cutty Sark lay quietly at her moorings he sighed. “I know it now if I didn’t before: no vessel afloat will ever catch that one.”

  “She’s ruined me,” the earl said bleakly, and left.

  There was really nothing left for him to do now, he reflected as the cab took him slowly home. The Regent’s Park house would have to go of course. It was far too expensive. The thought of sharing a smaller house with Lady Muriel was not a happy one, however. Perhaps, he reflected, he should go to live in France. The English pound went a long way on the Continent and many an English gentleman was able to keep up appearances in France or Italy when they might have been severely embarrassed back at home.

  In a grim but thoughtful mood he arrived back at the house, to be greeted with the news, unusual but not unwelcome, that his half-sister had gone out. “She didn’t say when she was returning, my lord,” the butler added.

  Glad of some time to be alone with his thoughts, St James went upstairs to his library, and sat down in the big armchair.

  It was some minutes before he noticed something odd. The door to the closet where the safe was had been left ajar. He got up slowly and went to close it. But as he did so, with a frown of surprise, he noticed that the safe was open. It was also empty.

/>   “The jewels!” he cried. How had a thief got in? He was rushing to summon the butler when he saw his keys on the library table. Beside them was a single sheet of white paper on which, scrawled in his sister’s large and childish hand, were just three words: I HAVE GONE.

  With a howl of bitter rage, the poor Earl of St James cursed them all. He damned Mabel, and Nancy, and Gorham Dogget, and Barnikel.

  “And damn you, too!” he cried. “You cursed Cutty Sark!”

  It was just as well that the earl did not witness the scene which took place when Barnikel returned to his wife Charlotte at Camberwell that evening. After she had fed him, and made him his favourite grog, and sat him very comfortably down by the fireside, and affectionately stroked his hoary old beard, she remarked: “I’m sorry it didn’t go better, but there’s one compensation.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We made a tidy bit of money.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I put a bet on the race. Well, I had our son do it for me.”

  “You bet on me? Like St James?”

  “No, dear. I bet on the Cutty Sark.”

  “You bet against your own husband, woman?”

  “Well, somebody had to. I knew you couldn’t win. The Cutty Sark had too much sail.” She smiled. “We made a thousand pounds!”

  After a long pause, Captain Barnikel started to laugh into his grog. “You’re as bad as your old Guv’nor sometimes!” he chuckled.

  “I hope,” she said, “I am.”

  The arrangement agreed between Esther Silversleeves and Lucy was very simple. As soon as they had both recovered their composure, Esther found that she could think with a clarity she had not known she possessed.

  “You are sure the girl knows nothing?” she asked Lucy.

  “Nothing at all,” Lucy promised.

  “Then tell her that you found me through an agency,” Esther ordered. “But you must tell her that since my own maiden name happened to be the same as yours, I do not think it appropriate that she should be a Dogget. She will have to change it.” She considered. “Let her be Ducket. That will do.”

  Lucy was perfectly agreeable to this. But if she had any misunderstanding about the arrangement, it was entirely dispelled when Esther declared with a vehemence that was quite frightening: “If ever, however, there is any word, any hint about any relationship to my father or about . . . the past, then she will be out on the street within the hour, and without a reference. Those are my conditions.” Only after Lucy had promised her faithfully they should be met, did Esther’s manner relent again. “By the way, what is her name?” she asked.

  “Jenny.”

  So early in February 1890 Jenny Ducket, as she was now called, came to train as a housemaid for Mrs Silversleeves.

  The spring of 1890 should have been a time of unparalleled joy in the household of Edward and Mary Anne Bull. In late March, Edward announced a breathtaking piece of news.

  “The Earl of St James is selling his Bocton estate in Kent,” he told the assembled family at dinner. “And I am buying it, lock, stock and barrel! We could move in tomorrow.” He smiled at them all. “There’s a deer park and a fine view. I think you’ll like it.” And then with a grin at his son. “As you’ve become such a gentleman, I should think it will suit you rather well.”

  “Us too!” cried two of his daughters. Eligible young men liked girls whose fathers had a place in the country. Only Violet did not trouble to give more than a vague smile of approval.

  In recent weeks, Violet had taken to going to lectures. At first her mother had insisted upon accompanying her, but after three or four long and tedious afternoons at the Royal Academy or some place associated with the university, she had given up and allowed the girl to go to these dull but respectable affairs on her own. The only thing she wondered was where this was intended to lead. “I suspect,” she confided to Edward, “she’s up to something.”

  In the first week of April Violet came into her room one evening and closed the door behind her.

  “Mother,” she said calmly, “I think there’s something you should know.”

  “If this is to do with university. . .” Mary Anne began wearily.

  “It isn’t.” She paused. “I’m going to marry Colonel Meredith.” And then she had the impudence to smile.

  For perhaps a minute Mary Anne was not able to speak. “But . . . you can’t!” she stuttered at last.

  “Yes, I can.”

  “You aren’t of age. Your father would forbid it.”

  “I’m nearly of age. Anyway, I could always elope if you force me to. There’s nothing, actually, that anyone could do about it.”

  “But you hardly know him! How. . . .”

  “I went to the poetry reading at Hatchards, mother. The one you didn’t go to. I’ve been seeing him at least two days a week ever since.”

  “The lectures. . . .”

  “Exactly. Though we do go to lectures, or galleries. Concerts too.”

  “But you should be marrying a young man! Why, even university would be better than this.”

  “He is the most educated and the most interesting man I shall ever meet in my life.”

  “He’s done this behind our back. He has never dared come to see your father.”

  “He will. Tomorrow.”

  “Your father will turn him out of the house.”

  “I doubt it. Colonel Meredith is rich and a gentleman. Papa will be quite glad to have me off his hands. If not,” Violet added coolly, “I’ll make a scandal. He’d hate that.”

  “But, child,” Mary Anne wailed. “Think of his age. It’s unnatural. A man of that age. . . .”

  “I love him! We are passionately in love.”

  At the word “passionately”, Mary Anne gave a little involuntary start, then, suddenly feeling very ill she looked at the girl, full in the face. “Surely,” her voice was husky, “you don’t mean. . . .”

  “I shouldn’t tell you if it were so,” the girl said blandly. “But after all, mother, one thing is certain anyway. You can’t have him.”

  THE SUFFRAGETTE

  1908

  Young Henry Meredith was weeping. He had just been soundly beaten. The fact that Mr Silversleeves, housemaster and teacher of mathematics, was a relation had not made any difference. Nor was his punishment unusual. The cane, the birch and the strap were liberally used in England, America and many other countries. The reason for his punishment hardly mattered. While Eton and one or two other schools might promote a more individualist ethos, Charterhouse was one of the broad swathe of public schools whose principal mission was to knock the nonsense out of their charges. They often failed, but they did their best, and Silversleeves was only doing his duty, as both he and young Meredith knew.

  There was also another possible reason for the boy’s misery. He was ravenously hungry.

  The Charterhouse school had started in 1614, some seventy years after the last monks had been ejected from the site by Henry VIII. More recently, the school had moved to a new location, thirty miles south-west of London. It was a fine old school and parents paid good money to send their sons there. Yet strangely, they either did not know or did not think it mattered that, once there, the children they undoubtedly loved were given almost nothing to eat. Thick slices of bread thinly buttered, stew or gruel in tiny amounts, cabbage boiled until it was bleached, wads of almost inedible suet pudding – this was the fare of privileged schoolboys. “Mustn’t spoil them. Boys should be brought up hard.” The survivors would rule the empire. Had it not been for hampers sent by his mother, Meredith could almost have starved.

  But as he returned to his hard bench in the classroom and the desk scored deep with the names of earlier sufferers, it was neither the electric pain nor the hunger pangs that caused Henry Meredith to choke back the tears. It was the article that an older boy had showed him in a newspaper that morning.

  As the trap passed through the park gates at Bocton that autumn day, Violet still fou
nd it strange to think that her mother would not be there. Mary Anne had died the previous year and, of the four Dogget sisters, only Esther Silversleeves was left now.

  The drive was long, and Violet nervously clutched her six-year-old daughter’s hand the whole way down. There was no going back now. I’ll hold my head high, she promised herself and gripped the child’s hand tighter as she saw her father waiting for them in front of the house.

  What made it worse was that old Edward Bull had been so good to them. Because Meredith had remained so strong and slim, she had supposed he would live to a great age. He had fathered their two sons and, when just over seventy, their little daughter Helen. So when he had suddenly died three years ago she had been taken by surprise. A massive heart attack, half a day when he could not speak, a tender look, a squeeze of her hand, and he was gone, leaving less money than she had thought. They were not exactly poor, but to keep up an appropriate household and educate the children she had found that her income was a little stretched. She had been grateful when her father had stepped in to pay for the children’s schools.

  For two whole hours while he walked them round the deer park and played with his granddaughter in the old walled garden Edward Bull said nothing. Only when Helen had been removed by the housekeeper and they were alone in the library did he take a folded newspaper, drop it down on the sofa beside her and remark:

  “I see you’ve been talking to the Prime Minister.”

  Violet waited to see whether this was the prelude to an explosion.

  The subject on which she had accosted the great man was not new. Since the Great Reform Act of 1832, democracy had been marching slowly forward. Two more Acts had enfranchised first the middle, then the better-off working class. Some two thirds of all adult men in Britain could now vote – but no women.

  A respectable group of ladies known as Suffragists had been quietly protesting against this injustice for forty years, but got nowhere. Five years ago a new group led by the fiery Mrs Pankhurst had appeared on the scene. “Suffragettes” these new crusaders were soon dubbed. Their motto was Deeds Not Words and they lived up to it. They began to sport their own colours – purple, white and green – on sashes, banners and posters. They held public meetings and interrupted parliamentary elections. And, with unpardonable bad manners, Edward Bull thought, they had taken to accosting politicians in the street.