She also loves learning French. A while ago she started talking about wanting to go to Paris after she finishes school (this was before the doctor business. And her desire to be a lady mayor). I did point out to her that the things we learn at school won’t be much use to her in Paris.
‘You won’t want to talk about your aunt’s pens,’ I said. ‘You’ll want to ask how to get to the train station and how much that loaf of bread is.’
But Nora said she’d learn that sort of thing when she got there.
Anyway, back to the cloakroom.
‘What shall we do first?’ asked Nora. ‘If we want to be actively involved, I mean.’
‘Well, there are meetings,’ I said. ‘Like the one I followed Phyllis to.’
Nora looked sceptical.
‘I don’t think we’ll be able to go to many of those,’ she said. ‘Not if they’re on Wednesday evenings outside the Custom House.’
She was right. It’s so unfair, Harry is always popping off to Frank’s house (and vice versa) and rugby matches and heaven knows what else whenever he feels like it, but if I want to go anywhere but Nora’s house Mother is always finding some reason why I shouldn’t go. And then she often finds reasons to stop me going to Nora’s house too.
‘They have other meetings too,’ I said. ‘Less, well, rough ones. They have them at the Phoenix Park at the weekends. So we might actually be able to go to one.’
Nora looked as though she was considering all this, but before she could say anything else, a fair-haired head suddenly popped through the coats and gave us such a fright that we both shrieked (though not very loudly. Despite what Harry says, I hardly ever shriek).
‘Stella!’ I said, when my heart stopped pounding.
‘Sorry,’ said Stella. ‘I heard your voices and it was quicker to look through the coats than walk all the way around to you. What are you talking about?’
Nora and I glanced at each other and I knew we were thinking the same thing. How much should we tell Stella? On the one hand, she’s our friend and it seemed awfully mean to keep something so big and important a secret from her, especially if we were going to get involved and start chaining ourselves to things. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if Stella would approve of our new interest. She may be our friend, but she can be a little bit … well, whenever Nora and I sympathise with her about being stuck in school all the time and having to share a dorm with Gertie Hayden, she always says that she doesn’t mind at all and that she LIKES being at school and that they have quite a lot of fun in the dorm and that the sodality (that’s a sort of religious club, I don’t think you have them in England) is lovely, and that Gertie isn’t half as bad when Grace isn’t around, and that the nuns are all very kind to them. And I’m sure all this is true, but anyone who won’t even say a bad word against Gertie is … well, I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Stella has never been very rebellious. She never really breaks the rules. In fact, I think she quite likes rules in general. So what would she think when we told her we wanted to break quite a lot of them?
All of these thoughts seemed to flash through my brain in just a few seconds, but at the end of those seconds I knew what I wanted to do. Our friendship with Stella was important, and you have to trust your friends. Besides, it wasn’t as if we were asking her to join in. And even if she didn’t approve of the whole thing, I knew that she wouldn’t tell anyone about it who would get us into trouble. So I gave Nora a tiny nod, and she nodded back, and then I turned to Stella and said, ‘We want to be suffragettes.’
Stella looked more baffled than shocked.
‘Suffragettes?’ she said. ‘Like those women who wear posters? And the ones in London who get carried off by policemen, kicking and screaming?’
‘Well, yes, sort of,’ I said. ‘At least, I hope we don’t get carried off by policemen. And we do have suffragettes in Ireland too, you know.’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Stella. She was fiddling with the end of her thick fair plait, which she always does when she is thinking hard. ‘They just don’t seem to be as dramatic as the English ones. They don’t seem to break windows and things.’
‘So far,’ said Nora.
I was pleasantly surprised by Nora’s attitude. Now she’d decided she wanted to get involved, she seemed to be becoming more enthusiastic by the second.
‘But aren’t they stopping Home Rule?’ asked Stella. ‘The suffragettes, I mean. One of the older boarders was reading a paper the other week and she said that if the suffragettes didn’t stop making a big fuss about women getting the vote, we wouldn’t get Home Rule at all.’
I had to admit that I didn’t know much about this. I suppose I’ve just been thinking of how important it is that women should be treated fairly. I hadn’t really bothered finding out much else. Nora didn’t know either. Then I remembered something.
‘When I went to a suffrage meeting at the Custom House, it seemed like the lady who spoke was all for Home Rule,’ I said. ‘And I know Phyllis has always been in favour of it. Besides, one of the suffragette leaders is the daughter of an M.P.’
As soon as I’d said all this, I realised that it sounded as though I had made the bold and daring decision to go to the suffrage meeting all by myself, rather than sneaking after Phyllis and going to a meeting by accident. But I didn’t feel like telling Stella the full story right then. I also didn’t feel like telling her what Phyllis had said about Mr. Sheehy not approving of his daughter’s activities.
‘Is it a secret?’ asked Stella, still fiddling with her plait. ‘You wanting to be suffragettes, I mean.’
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘After all, Grace just found out. And besides, there’s not very much to know. We’re still just finding out about it all, really. Nora’s only just decided to be one.’
‘Mollie,’ said Nora, ‘is surprisingly convincing.’
I felt rather pleased to hear this. Who knew I had such effective powers of persuasion? I’ve never been particularly good at getting people to follow my lead before now. If I had been, I’d have used my powers to persuade Harry and Grace to be less awful. I wondered if this was a sign that I was destined to go into politics myself one day and I was just thinking that ‘Mollie Carberry, M.P.’ sounded very fine when I realised that Nora was waving her hand in front of my face.
‘Are you listening, Mollie?’ she asked.
‘I was just wondering if I could be an M.P.,’ I said.
Nora looked alarmed.
‘Now, steady on,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just decided to get involved in all of this. I didn’t mean I was going to help you run for parliament. Anyway, you’re far too young.’
‘I know that, you goose,’ I said. ‘I meant some day in the distant future.’ I turned to Stella. ‘Anyway, I suppose we should probably make sure the nuns and teachers don’t find out. I don’t think Grace or Gertie would dare sneak, though.’
‘It wouldn’t be the end of the world if the staff did find out,’ said Nora. ‘They can’t expel us for having opinions. They’re always encouraging us to think for ourselves.’ I wasn’t sure about that, but she was probably right. And then the bell rang and we had to go back to class. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it much for the rest of the day, but Nora took home No Surrender that night and the next day she looked exhausted.
‘I was up all night reading,’ she said dramatically. ‘Well, almost. I used practically all the oil in the lamp, I stayed up so late.’ I think she was exaggerating but I didn’t say anything about that.
‘Isn’t it awfully sad?’ I said. ‘And horrible, too. The way they treat all those poor women!’
‘It’s the awful unfairness of it,’ said Nora, passionately. ‘Jenny’s sister! And the government doing all those terrible things to them just because they want the same rights as men! I don’t think I realised quite how unfair it was until now.’
‘That’s exactly it,’ I said. I was very pleased that we felt the same way.
‘When did you say the next meeting was?’
said Nora.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘But that’s just outside the Custom House. We could go to the Saturday one, though. I mean, I bet we could make an excuse to go to the park. Phyllis might even take us.’
‘Then you’d better start buttering her up,’ said Nora.
‘I’ll start tonight,’ I said. And I did, though the results were mixed. Harry was off playing some match or other and Father was at some sort of work-related dinner, so it was just Phyllis, Mother, Julia and me. Mother, as usual, was playing the piano (something very loud by Beethoven), Julia was concentrating very hard on making an elaborate house of cards on a small and dangerously wobbly table, and me and Phyllis were reading. I have started reading Jane Eyre – which is very good. There was a waiting list for it at the school library so I hadn’t read it until now. Have you read it? It is all about a poor downtrodden orphan that has horrible cousins (a bit like Harry only even worse), and then she goes to an even more horrible school where she has to eat burned porridge and makes friends with a very saintly girl. I’m not making it sound very good but it is, especially when she goes off to be a governess for a rich and rude yet interesting man called Mr. Rochester. Jane is small and ordinary, and nobody thinks she can do anything important, but she is full of fire and rage. I know how she feels.
Anyway, even though Jane Eyre is very good I wasn’t really concentrating on it because I was trying to think of ways to butter up Phyllis, who was totally engrossed in reading a book called A Room With a View. I knew there was no use in just asking her nicely if she would take us. I had a feeling she was already regretting lending me the Constance Maud book. So I said, ‘Your hair looks awfully nice, Phyl.’
And instead of being flattered and saying, ‘Oh, thank you very much, Mollie,’ she looked at me suspiciously and said, ‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing!’ I said. ‘I was just hoping that when I put my hair up it looks as nice as yours.’ Even as I spoke I realised I couldn’t blame Phyllis for suspecting my motives. Her hair was already coming out of its pins and a thick curl kept falling into her face. She tucked it back up and said, ‘Are you being sarcastic? It sounds as though you are.’ The curl came untucked and fell back over her eyes.
‘No!’ I said. ‘I was trying to be nice. But,’ I added peevishly, ‘apparently my niceness is wasted on you.’ And strangely enough, that seemed to have a positive effect because Phyllis said, ‘Then I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.’
And I said, ‘It’s all right’ and I knew that the first part of my mission to butter up Phyllis had been a success.
I made my next move the next day. It was Wednesday, so we still had plenty of time, and I thought it was best to move slowly. Softly, softly, catchee monkey, as Father likes to say. If you’ve never heard the expression before, it has nothing to do with actual monkeys (sadly), it just means that the best way to get what you want is to go slow and steady. I knew that Phyllis would probably be going to the meeting in town that evening, so when I passed her on the landing on my way down to breakfast I said, ‘Good luck.’
Phyllis gave me another one of her most suspicious looks. It’s starting to feel as though she can’t look at me any other way.
‘Good luck for what?’ she said.
I was starting to wish I hadn’t said anything.
‘The Custom House meeting,’ I said. ‘I presume you’re going?’
‘Shut up!’ hissed Phyllis. ‘Someone might hear you.’
‘No they won’t,’ I whispered back. ‘They’re all downstairs already. Listen, Phyl, I promised I wouldn’t let anyone know about all your … activities, and I meant it. You can trust me, honestly you can.’
And before Phyllis could reply, I skipped down the stairs. I didn’t want to push her too far. As I said to Nora at school that day, softly, softly is the best approach. But she wasn’t convinced.
‘You can’t be too soft,’ she said. ‘Saturday isn’t all that far away. And anyway, it’s all right for you. Even if it doesn’t work, you’ve already been to a meeting. But I haven’t.’
‘Stop fussing,’ I said. ‘I’ll persuade her. And if the worst comes to the worst, I bet we can think of an excuse to get away on Saturday.’
‘Aren’t you still sort of in trouble for sneaking off last week?’ said Nora.
‘Not really,’ I said, but Nora had raised an important point. As a rule in my family, once a punishment has been carried out (like me missing Nellie’s party), my parents say no more about the bad behaviour that led to it. But even so, I wasn’t sure they would be happy about me heading off with just Nora quite so soon. For a moment I thought about asking if Maggie could take us for a walk, but then I realised it wouldn’t be fair to Maggie. And even if I could bring myself to do such a low thing, she’d probably see through the ruse and refuse to take us to the Park anyway. Phyllis was our only hope.
She didn’t come home that evening until it was quite late, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to her on her own (I could have barged into her room but I didn’t think that would be very helpful). It wasn’t until Thursday evening that I finally managed to bring up the subject. For once, the two of us were on her own. Mother was talking to Maggie about tomorrow’s meals, Harry was off with Frank, Father had one of his headaches and had gone for a lie-down, and Julia was in the dining room doing her home exercises.
‘Phyllis?’ I said.
‘Um?’ she said absently. She was still reading A Room with a View, which was clearly more interesting than a younger sister.
‘You know the League meetings you were telling me about?’ I said.
That got her attention. She looked sharply at me.
‘What about them?’ she said.
‘Nora and I would really like to go to Saturday’s one,’ I said. ‘Just to see what they’re like.’
‘You must be joking,’ said Phyllis.
‘Oh, come on, Phyl,’ I said. ‘It’s the Phoenix Park! Lots of people go there on Saturdays. And it’s the afternoon! It’s not as though we’re hanging around town at night.’
Phyllis was clearly considering it. I think there is a part of her that is genuinely pleased that her sister has been recruited to the cause. But there is another part of her that doesn’t want an annoying little sister hanging around. Not that I am annoying. But I think most people think their younger siblings are a bit irritating. I certainly do. Anyway, I could tell that she was on the cusp of agreeing so I didn’t say anything else in case it tipped her over into the ‘no annoying sisters’ camp. I just gazed at her imploringly instead. And it worked!
‘You and Nora can come,’ she said. ‘But only if you stay where I can see you and keep out of trouble.’ She stood up and looked down at me in a very stern sort of way. ‘And this is a once-off, just to stop you going on about it. I’m not going to take you to any more meetings. All right?’
We’ll see about that, I thought. But I didn’t say it. I just said, ‘Thanks awfully, Phyl. We’ll be good as gold.’ And then I went out of the room before she could change her mind. I was so pleased I bounced up the stairs and as I bounced I found myself singing ‘The Kerry Dance’, but instead of the normal words I sang ‘Oh we’re going to get votes for women! Oh we’re going to a meeting too.’ But I sang it very quietly so nobody would hear.
I told Nora the good news as soon as we met the next day.
‘I told you I could persuade her,’ I said.
‘All right, there’s no need to be so smug,’ said Nora. ‘But well done.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said. ‘I know we can’t go out with posters and things. Or smash windows like they do in England. But maybe we could do something else to feel like we’re part of the cause. Something fun.’
‘Like what?’ said Nora.
‘We could write a song,’ I said. And I told her about my new version of the ‘Kerry Dance’ song.
‘That doesn’t sound very good to me,’ said Nora dubiously. ‘Sing it.’
I did.
‘
It is quite memorable,’ Nora admitted.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘It’s a memorable tune. Not that I wrote it.’
‘I suppose we could write more words,’ said Nora. Her face brightened. ‘It might even become an anthem! For all the Irish suffrage campaigners.’
‘That’s the spirit!’ I said. And then we were at the school and had to go in to English literature where we are reading dreadful Walter Scott, who everyone hates. I wish we could read Jane Eyre instead, it’s much better. But even Walter Scott can’t last forever (although it certainly feels like it), and at break, after we’d had our lunch, we found a quiet corner of the garden (the weather was so nice we could sit outside). Nora took out a notebook and a pencil.
‘It’s a very jaunty song,’ she said. ‘So we need quite dramatic lyrics.’ She hummed the tune. ‘What about – and I’m just thinking aloud – something like, “Irish girls and Irish women, hear the cry of the suffragettes”?’
‘That’s not bad,’ I said.
Nora sang the line. ‘Not bad at all.’ She wrote it down in the notebook. ‘What rhymes with suffragette?’
We both thought for a bit, but it was surprisingly hard. Finally, I thought of something.
‘Clarinet?’ I said.
‘I suppose it’s better than nothing,’ said Nora.
‘Well, that’s what you’ve come up with – nothing,’ I said crossly. ‘What about … we will make a joyful noise with drums and bells and clarinets?’
‘But we don’t have drums and bells,’ said Nora. ‘Or clarinets for that matter.’
‘Nora!’ I said. ‘It’s just a song. It’s a … what do they call it? A metaphor.’
‘For what?’ said Nora.
I didn’t really know myself.
‘For making a noise!’ I said. ‘You know. To get attention for the cause.’
‘I see,’ said Nora.
‘And I think we should have something about our brothers not thinking we should have the vote,’ I said.
‘You haven’t actually talked about it with Harry, have you?’ said Nora. ‘Maybe he wouldn’t mind you having the vote. And I don’t know what my brother thinks.’