Crooked Pieces (41 page)

I bent down and lifted her out, just as I had seen Ma do so many times, holding the head so it would not flop. She gave a little sound like a hiccup. I wrapped her inside my shawl and carried her back to my bed. I could feel her warm downy skin against me, her little fingers opening and closing, her scratchy little nails. I put her to my breast and she straightway started to suck. I felt a great cramping in my belly. I thought, is there no end to pain with these babies? But it was funny to look at her, sucking away like a tiny monkey with her pat of velvety
hair, black as coal and her eyes tight shut like she was dreaming.

When she had done I sat her up and patted her back as I have seen Ma do. She gave a great burp and sicked up half of what she had taken. I wiped her down and took her back to the orphans’ room. As I went to lay her down, she opened her eyes and reached her tiny arms towards me. I covered her up.

Lying on my bed I could hear her crying, very softly, just for a little while. But babies don’t cry softly, so I knew it must be me.

I left a note for Miss Lake. I said I was very sorry for the trouble I had caused.

It was dark when I got to Bow. The baby was wet and howling. Twice I had crept into a park and fed her, the griping in my guts as bad as ever. I had no clothes for her so had to keep folding my shawl in search of a dry patch, which seemed to annoy her greatly.

In Fetter Lane there was a trough for watering horses. I could not help myself. I drank from it. I had never been so thirsty, even on the thirst strikes. Each time I fed her it was as if all the moisture in my body was being drained out of me in one great rush. All the strength. I was so tired.

I thought to myself, what have I done? I am not fit for this. What kind of a life can I give her?

I thought of my room at Mrs Garrud’s, clean, warm, welcoming. Of my work. How I should be able to return to the office and carry on as before. How pleased Miss Christabel would be with me for wasting so little time. I knew I must decide.

I made my way along the side streets. There it was. That great cheerless building. The infirmary. I climbed the steps.

Inside I took off my jacket and made a nest for her in a dark corner behind the great wooden door. I knew as soon as she hollered a nurse would come, for it is a great echoey place and a child’s cries would ring from the rafters. I laid her carefully down, terrified to wake her. She stirred and gave a little grunt.

I whispered, ‘Goodbye, little one. Godspeed,’ and kissed her head. She opened her eyes and looked up at me, little hands clenching, and I knew I could not do it. She was too little to be left like this. She needed someone to care for her. A mother. She needed me. And I remembered Miss Davison, and how she had longed to be needed. I thought I owe her this at least.

The lights were all out in the hostel, save one at the back. I knocked as hard as I dared. Footsteps came hurrying. I heard the lock being pulled back and there, blinking into the darkness, hair all over the place and blouse covered in paint, stood Miss Sylvia. I said, ‘I am sorry to disturb you so late…’

She gave a little gasp. ‘Maggie, is it you?’

I nodded.

She drew me inside. ‘Maggie, I am so glad to see you. You cannot believe… And this is your beautiful baby. Mrs Garrud wrote to me about…what happened. I had so much hoped…but she said my sister had arranged matters. I thought I had better not interfere.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, Maggie, quick, come and sit down. Let me get you some food. You must be exhausted.’

‘Thirsty, mainly, miss.’

‘Oh, well of course, if you are feeding. Excuse the mess, I am painting a mural for the playroom. I have no time during the day.’

And so it was. Within minutes, broth, warm milk, clothes for the baby, a bed for me, a crib wheeled in beside it.

Miss Sylvia was gazing at the baby. ‘Would you let me hold… Is it a boy or girl, Maggie?’

‘A girl, miss.’

‘Oh, but she’s so beautiful. Just like her mother. She has your eyes. Well, I expect she does, anyway. Oh, you must be so proud, Maggie. So proud of her. You must let me paint the two of you together. Will you let me do that? Not now, I don’t mean. When she’s a bit bigger.’

‘I… I don’t know, miss. That it would be such a good idea… She’s… I’m not wed, miss.’

Her face grew serious. ‘I know that, Maggie. Forgive me, I never meant to embarrass you. I just… I suppose I got carried away. It’s so good to see a healthy baby. And to see you again. I have often thought about you, you know. Particularly since…’

‘Since you heard.’

She nodded. ‘Mrs Garrud said the baby was going for adoption.’

‘Yes. I… Miss Christabel said it would be for the best. Then I could go back to the office. Like before. No one would hold it against me.’

‘And is that what you want? It’s not too late, you know. If that is what you want.’

I closed my eyes. What did I want? To do the right thing. For who? For me? For the baby? For the Cause?

‘I want,’ I said, ‘to belong.’

She smiled.

‘And what are you going to call this beautiful daughter of yours?’

I had no answer for, in truth, I had not thought about it till that moment. ‘I’ll tell you in the morning, miss. I haven’t quite decided.’

That night I fell asleep with a hundred names spinning through my head. Sarah, for my mother; May for my nan; Emmeline in honour of Mrs Pankhurst; Christabel, for strength and courage; Sylvia, because she is my friend, Emily for Miss Davison.

‘Well,’ Miss Sylvia asked next morning when she had helped me bath the squeaky little horror. ‘Will you tell me now what you are going to call her?’

I said, ‘Does “Piglet” sound about right?’

She laughed. ‘Piglet Robins. She may not thank you in years to come. It’s a pity children cannot choose their own names, I always think.’

I said, ‘But yours is beautiful. How could you wish for better?’

She made a face. ‘I’ll tell you a secret, Maggie. Sylvia is my second name. My first is Estelle and I hate it. And next to Estelle, I’ll tell you what I hate most.’

‘What’s that, Miss Sylvia?’

She smiled. ‘It’s being called “Miss” Sylvia. It makes me feel a hundred. So please, from now on, as we are to work together, please will you call me “Sylvia”?’

I said I would try but it would be difficult with two of them about. She opened her eyes very wide. ‘So I shall make
“Sylvia” her second name, too, and call her by her first.’

‘And what’s that to be?’

‘Freda.’

Her face lit up. ‘Oh, that’s a beautiful name, Maggie. And I know what made you choose it.’

I wondered if she did.

‘For freedom, am I right?’

I said she was.

Word came that Miss Christabel wished to see me.

It was arranged we should meet in the office. After the others had gone home. Miss Sylvia offered to come with me, but I said, no, it would be better if I went alone.

How did I feel climbing those stairs, knowing and not knowing what lay ahead? I don’t know.

She was standing by the desk, busy with some papers. So cool in her pale blue linen. She did not look up.

‘Well, Maggie. What is all this?’

‘I’m sorry, miss. I never thought… It was just when I saw her… I couldn’t… She’s so little.’

Then she did look at me. ‘Maggie, sit down.’

I was glad to do so, for truly I was still mighty sore in certain places. Miss Christabel came round the desk. ‘Maggie, do you have any idea of the trouble you have caused?’

‘I’m truly sorry, miss. I know you took great pains to find my Freda a decent family…’

‘I certainly did. And what’s this, giving her a name? For heaven’s sake, Maggie, let the poor parents choose what they are to call her. They’ve had enough anxiety as it is. Set aside, we none of us knew where you’d gone till Mrs Garrud sent word.’

Fingers crushed in my palms. ‘Miss, I don’t think you understand.’

‘Understand what, Maggie? I confess your behaviour does continue to baffle me, even after all this time.’

My dress was sticking to me. Sweat, milk, dripping, leaking. Soiled. I saw her distaste.

‘I’m not giving her up, miss. I’m keeping her. That’s what I’ve decided.’

For only the second time in my life Miss Christabel seemed lost for words. Not for long.

‘Maggie, listen to me. I understand you may feel some attachment to the infant. It’s very commendable, but think.
Think
what you’re saying. Do you seriously intend to jettison all we – you have worked for, not to mention depriving a deserving and respectable couple of their chance to rear a child in a Christian environment, for a…whim?’

‘It’s not a whim, miss.’

‘Well, what else would you call it? There has never been any mention before of your wanting to keep the child. I thought you were happy with the arrangements.’

I lowered my head. ‘I thought I was, too, miss.’

‘So what has changed your mind? Has the man offered to marry you? Is that it?’

I thought I should be sick. ‘No, miss.’

‘Then what? Surely you can see that to keep the child would constitute a supremely selfish act on your part? Sometimes sacrifices are necessary. Besides, what sort of life would she have? Born out of wedlock. Do you wish to condemn her to poverty – worse than that, the life of a social pariah?’

‘A child needs a mother.’

‘It also needs a father. Perhaps you should have thought about that before you allowed yourself to bring such utter disgrace on both yourself
and
the movement.’

‘Like when I “allowed” the doctors to torture me, miss?’

‘What are you talking about? That’s not at all the same thing, as you very well know.’

‘Isn’t it, miss? Are you saying there’s a difference between being held down by prison guards and held down by workmen?’

‘What on earth…?’

‘The night I was caught. At the Parliament man’s house. It wasn’t true what they said in court. About the fire. I never lit one.’

‘You mean you didn’t even…?’

‘They found me. Two men found me. I tried. I did try. I just couldn’t…’

Miss Christabel was staring at me. Suddenly her hands were in the air. ‘I give up.
I give up
. After all your training. After all the endless effort that has been invested in you, not just by me, by all of us…the support, the encouragement, the time… And yet again, you fall at the very first hurdle. What is it about you, Maggie, that you must always take the easy path, while others tread the thorny one?’

It was as though an ice-cold wind had blown over me. I wasn’t me any more. I wasn’t a dirty, smelly, stupid girl who failed at every turn of the way. I was Ma, and my nan, and that mother burnt with an iron, and all the women for a thousand years who had crept along in the gutter while our ‘betters’ told us what to do.

‘I don’t know, miss. It didn’t seem so easy to me. Being starved and choked and beaten.’

‘Do you think you’re the only one, Maggie, to have suffered for the Cause? Because I can tell you, you are not.’

‘I don’t suppose I am, miss. But maybe I’m the only one who suffered for something else.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, miss, I suffered because I wasn’t like the rest of you. I wasn’t a lady. I wasn’t schooled. I wasn’t…right. And whatever I did, it was never going to be right for you, was it? Because I’m everything you say you’re fighting against. I’m stupid and ignorant and common and, worse than that, I want to live. I don’t want to die for this great wonderful Cause. I want to live and see my Freda grow up, and be with her and talk to her and tell her things.’

‘Tell her what, Maggie? How her mother forced her into a life of misery; betrayed her friends; cared only for herself…?’

‘I’ll tell her the truth, miss. She can make of it what she wants. But it’s going to be me she hears it from. Because I’ll be there when she asks. Not dead in a grave before she knows me.’

‘Maggie, you’re overwrought. I do understand, you know…’

I stood up. ‘No, you don’t, miss. You don’t understand one thing about me. When I first came here, came to work for the Cause, I’d’ve done anything for you. Do you know that? Anything. Just for one word of kindness, one word of praise that didn’t make me feel like a dog you’d taught to beg. You talk about sacrifices…’

‘All suffragettes make sacrifices.’

‘Well, I’ve no more left to make. I’m sorry if I’ve failed you, Miss Christabel, but you’ve had everything from me.
Everything I had to give and more. And you’re not getting my daughter.’

I don’t know if it was right or wrong, what I did. I only know that I stared right into those brilliant, unforgiving eyes for what seemed like half a lifetime, and the deeper I looked, the more I could see the emptiness behind them.

I have been with Sylvia for over four years now, working in the hostel, teaching, cooking, in charge of the paperwork.

I did not hear from Miss Christabel again, nor anyone in the office, though Mrs Garrud came out to see me as often as she could. She said there had been furious arguments up and down the country, for Miss Christabel had sent out an order that the branches should rid themselves of working-class supporters and deal only with educated women from then on. I could not help but wonder if I was the reason for it. Sylvia said, ‘No. My sister sees only her own way of doing things. She cannot cope with anything that challenges her authority. The middle-classes are generally more pliable. And more ignorant.’

I asked how you could be educated and ignorant. She laughed. ‘Easier than you think, Maggie. Life is what educates you. Not a dream of life.’

The war came that summer. Freda was cutting her first tooth so between her wailing and the whole country plodding around with long faces, it was not a jolly time.

The strangest thing to me was that, as soon as war was
declared all the suffragette prisoners were set free. Not only that, but Mrs Pankhurst and Miss Christabel turned right round in their shoes and began defending the Government and saying how all young men must join up to the army, and the women must give themselves over to working in factories and digging coal – all the things I thought we had been fighting against.

Sylvia does not believe in war, but that did not stop her working every waking hour to care for those whose sons and husbands were gone to it. It seems so few of them came back and those that did – the same ones we had seen marching away with eyes as bright as diamonds and pride sparking from their very heels – came back broken, crippled, blind – mad, a fair few of them, with eyes that had grown as old as Time.

Frank was lost at a place called Gallipoli. It took so long for the letter to come that he had been dead nigh a year and we all felt wretched for having gone on with our lives without a thought for him lying all that time in a ditch in some distant land. I did not cry for him, but I was sorry. Sorry because, although he had wounded and deceived me, I think he had always loved me in his heart and love is such a scarce thing to come by in this world.

Alfie was sent down the mines on account of his working for a coal merchant and being very strong (and possibly a bit of a danger to his fellows with a rifle!). He is married to Edith and she is expecting her first baby around Whitsuntide.

Lucy married a knife-grinder. I told Mrs Grant I thought it an excellent match for she could be sure of keeping her nails sharp. She laughed. ‘You two will be scrapping when you’re
ninety, I’ll wager.’ I saw no reason to doubt it. They have two boys who are nice enough little fellows. Well, no they are not. They are scrawny little weasels and seem to get all their delight from pulling Freda’s hair. Fortunately she is stronger than them and can easily knock them down and sit on them whenever she chooses. This makes the boys squall, Lucy shout, the knife-grinder sniff and generally, we do not call very often.

Pa, for all his grumbling about children out of wedlock, is Freda’s absolute slave. She sits on his knee and tells him all about what she will do when he is dead and the house is hers. For some reason this seems to amuse him. She can do anything she likes with him. Last time we went over he was carving her a wooden elephant from one of Alfie’s leftovers. He has already made her a plate with her name carved on it, some bricks and now he is talking about a truck with wheels on! I say, ‘Why not just buy her a charabanc, Pa, and be done with it?’

Will still sees life from the gloomy end. Last Christmas I took a box of crackers over and after dinner we all pulled them. He, of course, cried at the bang, but when he found there was a paper hat and a little tin soldier inside he got quite excited, and even more so when he discovered a joke tucked into the wrapping. It was something stupid but to him it seemed the funniest thing in creation. He read it over and over, each time guffawing more wildly. We were all so amazed we could not help joining in till we were all clutching at each other with tears running down our faces. Anyone looking in would think they had come upon Bedlam. I do not think Will is destined for the music halls.

Little Ann truly loved the crackers and chuckled away for hours. It is as though, since Dr Rowan cleared her ears, everything sounds like music to her. She has caught up so fast with her talking. In fact, Mrs Grant says it is impossible to shut her up sometimes, especially if Reverend Beckett goes maundering on in the sermon.

Evelyn is sixteen now. A quiet gentle girl, and so clever. Ma would be so proud of her. She helps us at the hostel when she is not at college. She is learning stenography and typing, and already has been promised a position at a law firm if she passes her exams. I know she will.

It is when I look at her I realise the struggle was not in vain. It would be so easy sometimes to think that all our fighting, all our suffering had been for nothing – when you see children begging in the streets, women still dying in childbirth and their babies with them, half the time, while their men are sent to fight an enemy we none of us know for the sake of some distant prince who knew nothing of us, but it takes just one good thing to revive our spirits and send us onward once again.

Often in the evening Sylvia and I sit together and talk of the old days. We laugh so hard when we recall some of the pranks – roller-skating through the census, dressing up as showgirls to fool the police, emptying flour over the Parliament statues, Miss Billington and her banner… Sunshine, the great rallies, the marches, the colours, the songs, the friendship. So perhaps that was my education, and not the Bible learning and adding up change from the butcher’s shop.

We do not talk of the bad times, except to remember those who are gone.

One night, the eve of Freda’s first birthday, Sylvia seemed much preoccupied. I asked what was the matter.

‘Nothing. I was just wondering… Please do not answer me if it offends you…’

‘What? I shall not be offended.’

‘I hope not. Truly, I do. I was just wondering if you ever…if…you have thought about trying to find Freda’s father? I know how wayward young men can be in these matters, but in my experience it is usually more from thoughtlessness than heartlessness. Many of the girls round here have been safely married once the fathers were made to accept their responsibility for the child. And life is so hard for…’

‘Bastards.’

‘Oh, don’t call her that. It is such a hideous word.’

‘Why not? She will hear it often enough, I’ll wager. Better that than…’

‘Than what? Marriage to a man you do not love? I can see your thinking, of course I can, but sometimes people grow to love one another. With patience and good sense.’

‘Freda has no father.’

‘Maggie, what are you talking about? She has to have a father. It takes a woman
and
a man to make a baby.’

I flung the sock I was darning across the room. ‘Or two? Or ten? Or a hundred? How do I know who her father is? I never saw his face. He could have been anyone. He could have been the King himself and I would not have known.’

Sylvia came and sat by me. She took her shawl and wrapped it round my shoulders for I was shaking so hard I could scarce speak. ‘Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.’

So I did.

At the end she sat for a long time staring at her hands, then up she got and went to poke the fire. ‘And yet you kept her. After all you had been through. That is a real mother’s love, Maggie. Freda will not want for anything while she has that.’

I shook my head. ‘You don’t understand. It is nothing good in me that made me do it. I could not help myself. I have tried so hard not to love her. I have looked and looked at her and tried to see a stranger, one I should hate for what was done to me that night.’

She waited.

‘But all I see is her. Her smile, her gurgles, her crossness when she is wet or tired, her curiosity, her trust. And besides, tomorrow she is one year old and she is starting to walk.’

‘What does that signify?’

I was silent for a moment. ‘That she has earned the right to my love.’

She asked me if birthing was really as painful as folk said.

‘Pretty well, I should say. Though not to a suffragette, of course.’

We laughed. ‘Mind,’ I said, ‘I cannot think how animals bear it. They have six or seven together, some of them.’

‘It’s a bit different for them, though.’

‘Is it?’

‘Well, they impregnate each other from behind, don’t they? Not like humans.’

After everyone was in bed I crept down to the clinic and found the medical books. There was a great one called,
Embryonic Fertilisation and Development
. It showed how a baby grew inside its mother. I turned back to the beginning.
There were two drawings. One of a man without his clothes, the other of a woman and arrows to show how the baby was made. It was as though a great shaft of light had come out of the sky and entered my brain. How could I not have known? But how could I have, when all my learning came from nature books?

And in the end it made no difference, for there was no way I could ever know which of the three my baby’s father was. I only knew who I wanted it to be, and that, no matter what, I would never see any of them again.

Not long after a package came for me. It had been forwarded from Mrs Garrud’s. Inside was a letter. It was on plain grey paper, the writing clear and jagged.

Inside the packet were two folded pieces of newspaper and an envelope. I opened one and there was the photo of me that first time I was released from Holloway. The other was of me at the Manchester meeting, my head held high. ‘
NO LONGER NOTHING
’. They were yellow with age, crumpled, streaked with a fine red mud. I thought, is this the mud Fred died in? Is this his blood mixed in with it? I rubbed it with my finger. The paper tore.

Inside the envelope was a postcard of our elephant, her great body rocklike, unmoveable, her trunk lifted high like a trumpet, looking upwards over the bars, up to where freedom waited. I turned it over. There, in Fred’s scribbly writing that he never could keep straight, were some copied lines of poetry. I have learnt them for they are all I have of him and yet what more could he have given me? For in those lines are all the words we never spoke and all the love we might have shared. What more could I have asked?

I still love books. The more I read, I see how little I knew, but there is great joy in gaining new knowledge, even if some of it shocks and frightens me, and I know I must go on, stretching away into the future, the past, the present to find out why.

‘Why what?’ Sylvia teases me.

‘Just “why?”’

Freda is with me on this. She never ceases with her questions. ‘Why? How? Who? What?’ Sometimes I am hard put to answer her, then I remember Fred, and how he studied each night to keep ahead of his pupils. And how he thought it was worth it.

I am as happy as I can be. Particularly today for today the church bells are ringing, ringing for life and hope and victory. The war is ended and when the men return they will find a different world from the one they left behind.

Their battle is won and so is ours. Strange that it should take a war in France to end the one at home. But when the men were gone and there was no one left to keep the country going but the women, it finally dawned on those grey
felt-filled
brains in Parliament that maybe we were not so close to rabbits as the Asquith liked to suppose.