To my surprise, it was harder facing Maude than Richard.
Richard’s response was predictable-a rage he contained in front of the police but unleashed in the cab home. He shouted about the family name, about the disgrace to his mother, about the uselessness of the cause. All of this I had known to expect, from hearing of the reactions of other women’s husbands. Indeed, I have been lucky to go this long without Richard complaining. He has thought my activities with the WSPU a harmless hobby, to be dabbled in between tea parties. It is only now he truly understands that I, too, am a suffragette.
One thing he said in the cab did surprise me. “What about your daughter?” he shouted. “Now that she’s firmly on the road to womanhood, she needs a better example than you are setting.”
I frowned-the phrase he used was so awkward it must be masking something. “What do you mean?”
Richard stared at me, both incredulous and embarrassed. “She hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what?”
“That she’s begun her-her…” He waved his hand vaguely at my skirt.
“She has?” I cried. “When?”
“Months ago.”
“How can you know when I don’t?”
“I was with her at the time, that’s why! And a humiliating moment it was, for both of us. She had to go to Jenny in the end-you weren’t home. I should have guessed then how deeply you were into this ridiculous nonsense.”
Richard could have said more, but must have sensed he didn’t need to. I was remembering when my own courses began-how I had run to my mother, crying, and how she had comforted me.
We were silent the rest of the way back. When we got home I took a candle from the hall table and went directly up to Maude’s room. I sat on her bed and looked at her in the dim light, wondering what other secrets she was keeping from me, and how to tell her what I must tell her.
She opened her eyes and sat up before I had said anything. “What is it, Mummy?” she asked so clearly that I am not sure she had been asleep.
It was best to be honest and direct. “Do you know where I was today while you were at school?”
“At the WSPU headquarters?”
“I was at Caxton Hall for the Women’s Parliament. But then I went to Parliament Square with some others to try to get into the House of Commons.”
“And… did you?”
“No. I was arrested. I’ve just come back from Cannon Row Police Station with your father. Who is furious, of course.”
“But why were you arrested? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. We were simply pushing through the crowd when policemen grabbed us and threw us to the ground. When we got up, they threw us down again and again. The bruises on my shoulders and ribs are quite spectacular. We’ve all got them.”
I did not add that many of those bruises came from the ride in the Black Maria-how the driver took corners so sharply I was thrown about, or how the cubicles in the van were so small that I felt I had been shut in a coffin standing up, or how it smelled of urine, which I was sure the police had done themselves to punish us further.
“Was Caroline Black arrested too?” Maude asked.
“No. She had fallen back to speak to someone she knew, and by the time she caught up the police had already got us. She was terribly upset not to be taken. She even came down to Cannon Row on her own and sat with us.”
Maude was silent. I wanted to ask her about what Richard had told me in the cab ride home, but found I couldn’t. It was easier to talk about what had happened to me.
“I’ll be in court early tomorrow,” I continued. “They may send me straight to Holloway. I wanted to say good-bye now.”
“But… how long would you be in-in prison?”
“I don’t know. Possibly up to three months.”
“Three months! What will we do?”
“You? You’ll be fine. There is something I want you to do for me, though.”
Maude gazed at me eagerly.
Even before I pulled out the collecting card and began to tell her about self-denial week-a campaign drive the WSPU was initiating to raise money-I knew I was doing the wrong thing. As her mother I should be comforting and reassuring her. Yet even as her face fell I continued to explain that she should ask all our neighbors as well as any visitors to place donations in the card, and that she should send it to the WSPU office at the end of the week.
I don’t know why I was so cruel.
As a rule I don’t involve myself in this family’s comings and goings. I arrive at half-seven in the morning, I cook for them, I leave at seven at night-six if the supper’s a cold one. I stay out of the way, I don’t have opinions. Or if I do I keep them to myself. I have my own little house, my grown children with their dramas-I don’t need more. Not like Jenny, who given half a chance pokes her nose into every story going. It’s a miracle she’s not had it cut right off.
But I do feel sorry for Miss Maude. I was going home the other evening through a thick fog when I saw her walking just ahead of me. I’d never seen her in Tufnell Park before. She’s got no reason to come over here-her life goes in other directions, north and west toward Highgate and Hampstead, not east toward Tufnell Park and Holloway. That’s to be expected of a family of that class.
The streets here are not so rough, but all the same I didn’t like to see her on her own, especially in that pea-soup. A person could disappear for good in one. I felt I ought to follow to make sure she came to no harm. It was clear enough where she was headed. Can’t say I blame her-I’d have done the same in her shoes, though living near it as I do, I don’t feel much draw to see it. But then, I don’t have family inside. My children act out their dramas within the bounds of the law.
Miss Maude found her way there easy enough-even with the fog and the strange streets she’s got a level head on her. When she got there she stopped and stared. The look of the place when it loomed out of the fog must have thrown her. The Castle, they call it round here. True enough it resembles one, with a big arched entrance and stone towers with ramparts. Most peculiar for a prison. My children used to play knights and maidens in front of it, when they dared. There are also rows of little windows set in a brick wall far back from the road, where the prisoners must be.
Then we both got a surprise-blow me if that Black woman wasn’t marching up and down in front of the entrance. She’s a little thing, but she wore a long gray coat that flapped round her ankles and made her look taller. She was singing this:
Sing a song of Christabel’s clever little plan
Four and twenty suffragettes packed in a van
When the van was opened they to the Commons ran
Wasn’t that a dainty dish for Campbell-Bannerman?
Asquith was in the treasury, counting out the money
Lloyd George among the Liberal women speaking words of honey
And then there came a bright idea to all those little men
“Let’s give the women votes,” they cried, “and all be friends again.”
Then she turned to the little windows and shouted, “Chin up, my dear-you’re halfway through now. Only three weeks to go! And we have so much to do when you come out!” Her voice hardly carried in the fog, though-don’t know how she thought anyone inside would hear her.
Miss Maude had seen enough-she turned and ran. I followed but my running days are long over and I lost sight of her. It was dusk now, and I began to worry. The shops were closed, and soon there wouldn’t be any decent people out on the street for her to ask directions of.
Then I turned a corner and she was rushing out of the fog toward me, looking very frightened.
“Miss Maude, what on earth are you doing out here?” I said, pretending not to know.
“Mrs. Baker!” She was so relieved to see me that she clutched my arm.
“You should be at home,” I scolded, “not wandering the streets.”
“I’ve been… for a walk and got lost.”
I looked at her. There was no point in being coy. “Wanted to see where she is?”
“Yes.” Miss Maude hung her head.
I shuddered. “Grim place. I’ve never liked having it on my doorstep. Here, you!” I called to a passing figure.
“Hallo, Mrs. Baker.”
“Miss Maude, this is Jimmy, my neighbor’s son. See her to the Boston Arms, will you, Jimmy? She’ll know her way from there.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Baker,” Miss Maude whispered.
I shrugged. “It’s not my business,” I said. “Not a word of this to anyone. Take care how you go in the fog.”
I keep my word.