No Greater Love
Authors: Janet MacLeod Trotter
NO GREATER LOVE
A heartrending story of one woman’s fight for justice and love
(A special edition of THE SUFFRAGETTE novel with a new ending – to mark the centenary of Emily Wilding Davison’s death)
Janet MacLeod Trotter
One of the Tyneside Sagas:
Gripping and impassioned stories set in momentous times – votes for women, world wars, rise of fascism – with the backdrop of vibrant Tyneside and heroines you won’t want to leave behind.
Copyright © Janet MacLeod Trotter, 1995, 2011, 2013
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
Published by MacLeod Trotter Books
New edition: 2013
ISBN 978-1-908359-25-4
Janet: “Very often the suffragette movement in the UK is associated only with London but there were many brave women in the North who got involved in the fight for the vote and this novel is a tribute to them.
My own family has links with the women’s emancipation movement. Three of my Scottish great aunts were suffragette members of the WSPU and my great grandmother (also called Janet) once brandished her umbrella at Winston Churchill in Edinburgh and shouted ‘Votes for Women Mr Churchill!’ My Great-aunt, Isobel Gorrie, was praised by the leadership as being the best seller of their radical newspaper in all of Scotland. My other inspiration was Emily Wilding Davison, who became a martyr to the cause when she was trampled to death by King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby while protesting. Emily is buried in a Northumberland churchyard close to where we live.”
No Greater Love
is a new version of
The Suffragette
– with a different ending – to mark the centenary of Emily Wilding Davison’s death.
The photograph on the cover is of my beautiful daughter Amy.
***
To Charlie – for making us laugh – and in memory of my suffragette Great Grandmother Janet Gorrie and Great Aunts Bel, Mary and Beth
Read a bonus chapter from FOR LOVE & GLORY
Janet MacLeod Trotter was brought up in the North East of England with her four brothers, by Scottish parents. She is a best-selling author of 16 novels, including the hugely popular Jarrow Trilogy, and a childhood memoir, BEATLES & CHIEFS, which was featured on BBC Radio Four. Her novel, THE HUNGRY HILLS, gained her a place on the shortlist of The Sunday Times’ Young Writers’ Award, and the TEA PLANTER’S DAUGHTER was longlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel Award. A graduate of Edinburgh University, she has been editor of the Clan MacLeod Magazine, a columnist on the Newcastle Journal and has had numerous short stories published in women’s magazines. She lives in the North of England with her husband, daughter and son. Find out more about Janet and her other popular novels at:
www.janetmacleodtrotter.com
By Janet MacLeod Trotter
Historical:
The Jarrow Trilogy
The Jarrow Lass
Child of Jarrow
Return to Jarrow
The Tyneside Sagas
The Tea Planter’s Daughter
The Suffragette
/ No Greater Love
A Crimson Dawn
A Handful of Stars
Chasing the Dream
For Love & Glory
Mystery:
The Vanishing of Ruth
The Haunting of Kulah
Teenage:
Love Games
Non Fiction:
Beatles & Chiefs
Short Stories:
Ice Cream Summer
The Durham Trilogy
The Hungry Hills
The Darkening Skies
Never Stand Alone
Scottish Historical Romance
The Beltane Fires
1903
Mabel Beaton stared numbly from behind the starched net curtains of the downstairs parlour, waiting. From the open door she could hear the murmur of the women’s voices drifting in from the kitchen across the corridor, concerned and doleful, yet edged with the excitement of gossip. She was aware of the clink of china as her sister-in-law Violet prepared tea and the clang of a poker on the grate as someone stabbed the fire.
Never before had she felt so cut off from her neighbours and friends, cocooned in shock. Mabel could not go to them now or find any comfort in their chatter, so she continued her vigil by the window among the peppery-smelling houseplants and the slow tick of the marble clock.
‘Here’s a cuppa, hinny.’ Mrs Liddle bustled into the unlit room, washed in sepia light from the late September sun. ‘You must keep your strength up.’
‘Ta, Mrs Liddle,’ Mabel answered dully, ‘just put it on the table—’ She broke off, suddenly aware of what she had said. They both looked at the table in silent awe, then with a wary glance, the stout neighbour plonked the cup down on the mantelpiece with a nervous rattle.
‘You get that down you before the bairns get home,’ Mrs Liddle coaxed. ‘It won’t do for them to see you pale as a ghost.’
Mabel turned her back swiftly to hide the tears that filled her dark blue eyes. ‘I will be the first to break the news to them,’ she said with a firmness she did not feel. ‘I don’t want Violet blurting it out, do you hear?’
‘Aye, hinny,’ Mrs Liddle agreed and retreated to the warmth of the kitchen.
From her lonely post by the window, Mabel could see down the wide terraced street with its neat bay windows and tiny borders of flowers bowing in the wind behind sturdy railings. A prosperous street of gleaming brass door knockers and blackened boot grates, it had been their home for ten happy years. Their house was built on the lip of the steep hill, with open fields and a tree-lined park at the back. She could see all the way down to the River Tyne and beyond to the hills of County Durham without interruption. From here the noise of the riverside yards and factories was muted and the smell of industry bearable. Here, her family were safe and well nurtured, their future assured - or had been until earlier in the day.
Mabel’s thick small hands flew to her pale face to stifle a sob of panic. ‘Oh, me poor bairns!’ she gasped to herself and as she did so caught sight of her eldest daughter Susan, toiling up the hill.
Either side of the plump twelve-year-old walked Mabel’s youngest two, Helen and Jimmy, held in a protective grasp to frustrate escape among the other returning school children. Susan panted, pink-cheeked, her straight fair hair lifting in the breeze and covering her face, yet she would not let go of her siblings to brush the annoying strands away.
As they passed a game of skipping, Helen pulled mutinously at her elder sister’s hold, her sandy-coloured curls tossing around her petulant face. Mabel could see Helen shouting and Susan placating and knew at any moment her pretty six-year-old daughter would resort to tears to get her way. For a moment she forgot her own torment and watched to see who would win. In less than a minute, Helen had wormed her way to the edge of the skipping game, her face a smile of triumph while Susan stood by resignedly, lifting the weakling Jimmy into her arms.
Mabel let the heavy velvet curtain drop back into place, roughly brushed away the tears from her face and took a deep breath.
‘Susan’s nearly home,’ she told the assembled women as she entered the kitchen, her small body stiff and dark head erect as she steeled herself for the ordeal.
‘Let me come with you.’ Violet rose from her chair at the head of the table where she had been holding court. Alec’s chair, Mabel thought to herself with a swell of resentment.
‘No,’ Mabel answered sharply, ‘they’ll hear the news from me.’ Ignoring the offended look that her sister-in-law conveyed to the others, she forced herself to walk briskly across the well-swept floor and out of the door.
The street seemed comforting in its normality, filling up with children and the sound of their games. The clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobbles and the sparks from a rolley’s wheels announced the arrival of the rag and bone man at the top of the street. ‘Candy rock for stocking legs!’ he cried in a sing-song voice, drawing the children to his approaching cart like a magnet. Soon the buzzers from the shipyards would sound the end of the daily shift and the men would be swarming up the hill.
‘Helen, stay here!’ Susan called after her wilful sister. ‘Don’t get too near that horse.’
At that moment, Helen caught sight of her mother and dashed towards her. ‘Mam, give me something for the ragman - he’s got candy and windmills. Give us something, Mam!’
Mabel grabbed her youngest daughter to her velvet blue skirt and gave her a hug, her resolve to appear strong almost evaporating.
‘Not today, pet. Come inside,’ her mother answered hoarsely.
Helen drew away. ‘No! I’m staying out to play.’
By now Susan was at her side, with the dark-eyed Jimmy flopped in exhaustion against her round shoulders after his walk up the hill from school where he had started only three weeks ago.
‘Our Tich is all done in,’ Susan smiled at her mother, kissing her brother on his sallow cheek.
The runt of the litter, Mabel could not help thinking as she reached over to take her small son from the panting Susan; he was so unlike her robust daughters. Alec had always defended Jimmy. ‘The wain’ll grow up to be bigger than me one day,’ her husband had joked. ‘Carry his dad to his grave single-handed!’ Mabel shuddered at the memory of those chill words.
‘Where’s Maggie?’ she asked, squinting into the low sun.
‘Fighting with the lads,’ Susan said crossly. ‘She doesn’t know when to leave well alone, Mam.’
Mabel gave a fleeting smile at her daughter’s grown-up disapproval.
Just then, Maggie came running over the brow of the hill, pursued by two older hefty boys. One of them pulled at her dark ringlets while the other tried to grab the books she was clutching. Mabel could see that they were hurting her, her ten-year-old daughter’s grey eyes were smarting with tears and she was kicking as hard as she could with her black scuffed boots.
‘Get off us!’ Maggie shouted.
‘Teacher’s pet!’ the twin boys taunted, managing to wrench the books from her hold. They dropped them on the cobbles and pages of jotter scattered in the wind.
As Maggie took a swing at Billy who still held her hair, Mabel felt a protective anger ignite within her. Dumping Jimmy on the pavement, she went to her daughter’s rescue. She waded in with surprising strength for such a small woman, slapping Maggie’s tormentors about the ears and sending them sprawling into the gutter.
‘Keep your grubby hands off me lass, you little wasters!’ she yelled. ‘She’s got more brains in her little toe than all you Gordons put together. Now clear off!’
Billy and Joshua Gordon gawped at the angry woman with the tight bun of dark hair. They knew the wife of the riveter, Alec Beaton, had a temper, but they had never been on the receiving end before. Scrambling to their feet they sped off up the street in humiliation.
Mabel saw Susan had flushed with embarrassment at the outburst and Jimmy was clutching his sister in fright. But Maggie shook her black ringlets out of her slim face and fixed her with an unblinking look, the precious books forgotten for a moment.
‘What’s wrong, Mam?’ she asked directly. ‘Why are the curtains drawn and it’s not even dark?’
Mabel flinched at the child’s capacity to see what the others had failed to notice. Of all her children, Maggie had the ability to sense what her mother felt without having to be told. Alec often said that Maggie had the gift of second sight like his Highland mother, but Mabel scoffed at such notions. ‘She’s just sharp, is our Maggie,’ she would reply. ‘Nothing gets past that one.’
Mabel licked dry lips, suddenly unable to tell her children what they had to know, hating the vulnerable, perplexed looks on their faces. She bent down to salvage Maggie’s schoolbooks, gulping back the misery that choked her. Helen had come sidling up to listen and Mabel was aware of neighbours hovering in their doorways watching the drama unfold, relieved that the ordeal was not theirs.