When I reached the hall I could hear voices from the dining room. Father must have already gone to work, but Harry, Frank and Mother seemed to be having a lively discussion. I paused for a moment outside the door, and my heart sank right down to my toes as I heard Harry say the words, ‘silly suffragettes.’ A horrible thought struck me. I had been holed up in my room for a long time, and I had been concentrating so hard on my letter that I doubt I’d have noticed if anyone had knocked on the door. What if Mrs. Cantwell had already been around to tell Mother about me and Phyllis, and Harry and Frank were now talking about our supposed misdeeds?
For a second I felt like running down to the kitchen and avoiding all of them for as long as possible. But I knew I had to face the truth, whatever it might be. So I took a deep breath and opened the door. Mrs. Cantwell wasn’t there, but Harry was still in full flow as I walked in. He had a newspaper in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.
‘The police had to escort them to the tram,’ he said, through a mouthful of toast. He really has no table manners. ‘And then the crowd smashed the tram windows!’
‘That’s hardly the suffragettes’ fault,’ said Mother mildly. ‘Oh, there you are, Moll. What on earth have you been doing up in your room all morning?’
‘Writing to Frances,’ I said.
‘It’s their fault for making shows of themselves in public,’ said Harry, ignoring me.
‘That’s a bit much,’ said Frank firmly. ‘They had every right to have their meeting in peace.’
‘They shouldn’t have had a meeting at all,’ retorted Harry. ‘They should have known there’d be trouble, after that hatchet business.’ He looked at Frank suspiciously. ‘Anyway, why are you defending them? You’re not becoming one of those feeble men who go on about women being equal, are you? Apparently one of them sneaked in to Mr. Asquith’s meeting last night. Such fools.’
‘As a matter of fact, I agree with them,’ said Frank. ‘And I don’t think they’re fools. Or feeble. Quite the opposite, really. I think they’re jolly brave, standing up for women.’
‘You can’t really believe that rot!’ Harry’s face was a picture.
‘Now, now,’ said Mother. ‘No fighting at the breakfast table. Especially in the holidays.’ She turned to me. ‘There’s some toast left, if you want it.’
‘No there isn’t,’ said Harry, grabbing the last slice from the rack and slathering some butter on it before shoving half of it into his gaping maw. He really is revolting. And he was clearly spoiling for a fight. But I refused to rise to his bait.
‘I’ll ask Maggie to make me some,’ I said. ‘How’s Phyllis?’
‘She says she’s fine.’ But Mother didn’t look totally convinced. ‘Maggie brought her toast and tea in bed.’
‘I’ll go and get some breakfast for myself,’ I said, pointedly turning my back on Harry, who was finishing the toast with exaggerated expressions of pleasure. When I reached the kitchen Maggie was sitting at the table, a cup of tea in her hand and a weary expression on her face.
‘I’ve just come to get some bread and butter,’ I said. ‘If there’s any bread left.’
‘And have you ever known this kitchen to run out of bread?’ Maggie may have looked tired, but there was humour in her voice. ‘I’ll slice it for you.’
‘You sit there,’ I said, as firmly as I could. ‘I’ll do it.’
Maggie didn’t argue as I unwrapped the loaf from its paper covering and got out the breadknife.
‘Did Phyllis tell you what happened last night?’ I cut myself two sturdy doorsteps of bread.’
‘She did,’ said Maggie. ‘And she told me you were there too. After everyone telling you not to go.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I couldn’t help blushing, this time out of guilt. ‘But I didn’t lie to you. I just told you I was meeting Nora.’
‘That’s lying by omission, which is a sin as you know very well.’
I couldn’t meet Maggie’s stern gaze as I buttered the bread.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. And I was. I didn’t really feel guilty about going out on Friday, but I felt guilty about lying to Maggie. I told myself that she hadn’t wanted to know about my suffrage activities, so it was lie told in good faith. But I still felt a bit queasy.
And then there was a knock on the door, and I felt even queasier. If it was Nora – and I had a feeling it was – soon I would know my fate.
‘I’ll get it!’ I cried, and ran into the hall, a slice of bread and butter in one hand. I flung open the door and there indeed was Nora, looking as if she’d run all the way to my house which, as it turned out, she had.
‘Did she tell?’ My voice was a desperate whisper. Nora shook her head. I felt my shoulders sag with relief.
‘Thank heaven!’ I said. ‘Do you think she will?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nora, regaining her breath. ‘Can we go upstairs?’
I nodded and Nora followed me up to my room.
‘So?’ I said, when the door was safely closed and I’d put the bolster against the bottom of it to make sure no sound drifted out. ‘What did she say? When you talked to her, I mean.’
‘That’s the thing,’ said Nora. ‘I haven’t talked to her!’
I stared at her in disbelief. ‘But how?’
‘She was already home when I got there,’ said Nora. ‘That tennis-club lady must have got them a fleet of cabs, for I can’t imagine how Grace managed it so quickly otherwise. And when I went up to bed she was pretending to be asleep.’
‘Did you try and get her up?’ I asked.
‘Of course I did!’ said Nora. ‘But she pretended she couldn’t hear me.’
My stomach churned at Nora’s words. This didn’t sound good. A Grace pretending to be asleep to avoid Nora sounded like a Grace who was preparing to reveal a terrible secret about her cousin and couldn’t bring herself to face her future victim.
‘What about this morning?’ I said.
And now it was Nora’s turn to blush.
‘She left before I got up,’ she said.
‘I thought she always made lots of noise in the mornings!’ I said.
‘She does, usually! But she can be sneaky when she wants to be. And,’ Nora added honestly, ‘I probably wouldn’t have woken up even if she had been stamping around the place as usual. I really was exhausted.’
I couldn’t blame Nora for not waking up and intercepting Grace. I had slept like a log as well.
‘Where is she now?’ I asked.
‘At the tennis club,’ said Nora. ‘But she’s due home for lunch. So I thought we could intercept her en route. We could wait at the corner – you know, near the bridge. And we should probably go there now, just in case she leaves early.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
I was worried that Mother might object to me going off with Nora again – the very idea might make her realise just how late I’d come home last night – but when I stuck my head into the dining room Harry was telling her a long and boring-sounding story about yesterday’s cricket match so she barely noticed me telling her I was off to the Botanic Gardens (not entirely a lie, if we took Grace there to have a stern talk with her). I quickly made my escape and a few minutes later Nora and I were trotting down the road in the direction of the tennis club. We hadn’t gone far before we spotted a familiar figure coming towards us.
‘Hello girls!’ Mrs. Sheffield was cheerful. Possibly because she wasn’t accompanied by Barnaby, who as I know from experience is not an easy walking companion. ‘I’ve just come from the tennis club and I was wondering …’ But before she could get any further, I interrupted her.
‘I’m most awfully sorry, Mrs. Sheffield, but we really have to go,’ I said. ‘Mrs. Cantwell is expecting us and we’re already frightfully late.’
‘We really are,’ said Nora helpfully.
And without waiting for Mrs. Sheffield to reply, we hurried on down the road.
‘We weren’t too rude, were we?’ I said, as
we turned the corner.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Nora. ‘We said we were late for my mother. That’s a decent excuse.’ A thought struck her. ‘Oh Lord, you don’t suppose Grace told her about yesterday, do you? She knows Mrs. Sheffield is a friend of your mother.’
‘Surely not!’ My stomach lurched. ‘No, she can’t have. I don’t think Mrs. Sheffield would have been so jolly if she was on her way to tell my mother I’d been in a riot.’
‘You’re probably right.’ Nora sounded calmer. ‘We’ll just have to persuade Grace to stay quiet.’
‘You never know, she might not take too much persuading,’ I said hopefully. ‘She hasn’t been too hateful to us recently.’
‘I think you’re giving her far too much credit,’ said Nora. ‘You know what she thinks of the movement. She’s going to think that we’re all a lot of street brawlers and that she’s doing the right thing by stopping us.’
I thought of what Harry said when he was stealing my toast.
‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ I said. ‘And the last time she threatened to tell on us, Stella stopped her by threatening to throw her notebook down the lav. But we have nothing to bargain with now.’ We had almost reached our destination. ‘Oh Nora, what will we do if she reveals all?’
‘We’ll have to face our punishment like Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington and the others,’ said Nora in a brave voice. But her voice wobbled a bit as she added, ‘I hope we don’t have to.’
The corner where we planned to pounce on Grace was occupied by a house with a low wall running around its garden.
‘At least we have somewhere to sit while we await our fate,’ said Nora.
‘Until the owners chase us away for vagrancy,’ I said. But we sat down anyway. Neither of us said anything for a while as we peered anxiously down the road in the direction of the tennis club.
‘I wouldn’t mind us being punished,’ I said suddenly, ‘if it felt like it was for the sake of the cause. You know, like the leaders going to prison. They made a dramatic statement and everyone knows about it. But if we get sent off to boarding school just for being at a meeting, we haven’t really done anything for the cause. We haven’t left anything behind. And no one in the world will know why we’re being punished besides our families. It won’t be in the papers. It won’t actually do anything. If you know what I mean.’
‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ said Nora gloomily. ‘I mean, I don’t mind making a sacrifice for the cause. But it doesn’t do the cause much good if no one knows about it.’
‘Maybe we could alert the newspapers,’ I said. ‘I mean, if they’re going to send us off to boarding school anyway, what have we got to lose?’
But Nora didn’t answer. She was jumping to her feet.
‘There she is!’ She sheltered her eyes from the sun and peered down the road. ‘And she’s not alone!’
She certainly wasn’t. As Grace drew closer, I could see that one of her hands held her tennis racket, while the other held a lead. And on the end of the lead was a sturdy harness, and in that harness, prancing along gleefully, was the Menace.
‘What on earth is he doing with her?’ I wondered.
‘Maybe he’s joined the tennis club,’ said Nora impatiently. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we talk her out of saying anything about us.’
But that task looked like it would be easier said than done when Grace caught sight of us. She froze for a moment. (The Menace was pulled short on his harness, and barked his disapproval.) She glanced at the road, and if she could have run across it she would, but luckily there were several delivery vans making their way down the street so she was stuck on the same side of the road as us. Nora and I hurried towards her.
‘Grace!’ Nora was trying to keep her voice calm, but you could tell how worried she was. ‘We need to talk to you.’
‘No, you don’t,’ said Grace, hurrying past us, the Menace trotting along as fast as his twinkling little legs could carry him.
‘Please, Grace,’ I begged, walking fast to catch up with them. ‘It’s about last night.’
‘I don’t want to talk about last night.’ Grace’s voice was tight. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘But Grace …’ began Nora.
Grace stopped walking and whirled round to face us.
‘Can’t you do anything you’re told to do?’ she cried. ‘Go away!’
And Barnaby, as if sensing his heroine’s mood and wishing to defend her from danger, made a growling noise that stopped me in my tracks. I had heard him bark before (many, many times, as you know) but I’d never heard him growl.
‘Don’t follow me!’ said Grace, and Barnaby gave another growl, his woolly white ears sticking up on each side of his head. I had never seen him look so enraged. I suppose it was quite impressive that the thing that had spurred him to such dramatic action was a desire to protect a human being. Even if that human being was Grace.
‘All right,’ I said meekly. ‘Sorry.’
Because really, what else could we do? We weren’t going to persuade her to keep our secret by chasing her when she was in a mood like this. Especially with the Menace turning into the Hound of the Baskervilles (which is one of my favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, but a savage hound is not as entertaining when it’s actually menacing you in real life). We stood on the path for a few minutes, watching Grace hurry away. Every so often Barnaby turned his head and glowered at us with his button eyes until they were out of sight.
‘Do you think she’s going to tell on us?’ I said.
‘I have a horrible feeling she is,’ said Nora. ‘It would explain why she doesn’t want to talk to us. She can’t face us knowing that she’s going to send us to the scaffold.’
This was a bit of an exaggeration, because even if our parents were very angry they weren’t going to have us executed, but I knew what she meant. We might as well be dead if we were sent off to separate boarding schools in the middle of nowhere. The sky, which had been clear and blue when we left my house, had begun to cloud over, and a sharp and strongly scented breeze blew in from the canal.
‘We could always run away,’ I suggested.
‘I thought of that when Grace first came to stay, remember?’ said Nora. ‘And you pointed out how impractical it was.’
I sighed. I knew she was right. And as if in sympathy with my mood, the clouds suddenly burst and large rain drops began to fall. In the distance there was a rumble of thunder.
‘Let’s go back to my house,’ I said. ‘Even if Grace has told all, your mother probably hasn’t gone round there yet.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Nora, whose skirt was already half-soaked with rain. ‘Let’s go.’
We ran as fast as we could but we were still utterly soaked AND I had a terrible stitch by the time we reached the corner of my road.
‘Bless us and save us,’ said Maggie when she opened the door to find two sodden figures on the doorstep. ‘Where have you two been?’
‘We just went for a walk,’ I said. We were so wet that our clothes were dripping all over the hall tiles.
‘Well, go up and change into dry clothes before you catch your deaths,’ said Maggie. ‘You must have something Nora can borrow, Mollie.’ She smiled at Nora. ‘Then you can have tea with your cousin in the drawing room. I’ve made biscuits.’
‘My cousin?’ Nora froze with one foot on the bottom stair.
Maggie nodded. ‘She’s in with Mrs. Carberry and Mrs. Sheffield – she’s got Mrs. Sheffield’s little dog with her again.’
‘What are they doing there?’ I tried to keep my voice steady. It somehow hadn’t crossed my mind that Grace might avoid Nora’s mother and go straight to mine.
‘You’ll have to ask her that,’ said Maggie. ‘Now, go and get changed while I boil the kettle.’
Nora and I exchanged anguished looks and hurried up to my room.
‘So this is it,’ I said, struggling to unbutton my sopping wet blouse.
‘It’s all over.’ Nora
looked as if she were about to burst into tears as she pulled off her cotton skirt.
I couldn’t bear the thought of going into that drawing room and seeing Grace’s face (and Barnaby’s for that matter) as we heard our fate.
‘Let’s wait until she’s gone,’ I said, handing her an old blue dress that luckily happened to be clean. ‘I can bear it – I can almost bear it – if she’s not there.’
‘All right,’ Nora said. She fastened the buttons on the blue dress, which was a little too short for her. ‘I feel like Mary Queen of Scots on my way to have my head chopped off.’
‘We should be wearing black velvet,’ I said miserably. I had changed into a linen blouse with embroidery on the collar that looked far too cheerful for such a mournful day. I was wondering if I should change into something more sombre when my mother’s voice came ringing up the stairs.
‘Mollie! Can you come to the drawing room, please?’
I stared at Nora, my eyes wide. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
‘If they send you away right now and we’re not allowed see each other again,’ I said, ‘I want you to know that I’m sorry for getting you mixed up in all of this.’
Nora let go of my hand and elbowed me sharply in the ribs.
‘Don’t talk rot.’ Her voice was a little shaky. ‘I knew exactly what I was doing. And I’d do it all again.’ She looked at me. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course I would,’ I said. And I meant it. Because even if we didn’t win any publicity for the cause, even if no one ever knew about what we’d done, we would know. We would know that we’d taken a risk for something we believed in. And however they decided to punish us, we would know that it was worth it. Yes, I regretted going out the other night, but that was because the Ancient Hooligans and their supporters had been so awful. In a fair and just world, we would be able to go to whatever meetings we liked without fear. And that was the world we would keep fighting for.
I thought all of those things as we slowly made our way down to the drawing room. I could hear Barnaby barking on the other side of the door. I reached out to the doorknob and then paused.