Authors: Janet MacLeod Trotter
‘Oh, you silly lass,’ Maggie said in exasperation. ‘Can’t you see there’re more important things in life than tappy-lappying after lads? I do what I do because I want to make things better for all lasses - including the likes of you, Helen, believe it or not.’
Helen pulled a face and Maggie sank back again, feeling nauseous from the effort. But Susan was not going to let the matter lie.
‘This suffragette business has got to stop, hasn’t it, Mam?’ she scolded, still badly shaken by what had happened. ‘She could have got herself killed.’
‘Let the lassie rest,’ Granny Beaton chided gently. ‘It’s nearly the Sabbath. Words can wait till the morning when tempers have cooled.’
But Susan would not be silenced. ‘It needs saying now,’ she said in high dudgeon. ‘Maggie’s got to give up this business before it brings the family down.’
‘Aye,’ Mabel said with a stem look, rising from the bed, ‘our Susan’s right.’
Maggie felt her eyes sting with tears. ‘I won’t give it up, Mam, you can’t make me,’ she answered in a small, defiant voice.
‘Yes, she can,’ Susan replied heatedly. ‘You’ll do as Mam and me tell you as long as you live here.’
‘I’m a woman of twenty,’ Maggie protested, ‘and old enough to make my own decisions.’
‘You’ll do what’s right by the family,’ her mother said severely, ‘instead of inviting trouble.’
All at once, a memory came back to Maggie. ‘I didn’t ask for trouble - it was all Richard Turvey’s fault, anyway. They were after him, not me.’
Susan gawped at her. ‘Richard? What are you talking about?’
‘Who was after him?’ Mabel demanded.
‘Some drunks at the Half Moon. I was more angry at them upsetting Mrs Surtees’s peas. But Richard was there, sprawling in the gutter.’
Susan went puce. ‘Of all the cheek! Dragging Richard’s name into this sordid carry-on! He couldn’t have been there anyway, he works Saturday nights. No, you’re just saying this ’cos you’ve taken a dislike to him.’
‘Aye,’ Helen piped up, ‘you’re just jealous because he doesn’t fancy you.’
‘I know what I saw,’ Maggie answered in agitation. ‘He was being chased for money. He asked me to help him and then they turned on me, because of my sash.’
‘You’re lying!’ Helen shouted. ‘Richard’s a gentleman.’
‘It’s the truth!’
‘George Gordon said nothing about Richard and he would have recognised him if he’d been there,’ Susan said sharply.
‘He must have run off.’
‘Really, Maggie, how could you say such a thing!’ Susan was furious.
Mabel clapped her hands for silence. ‘Quiet, the lot of you! I don’t give two pins for this story about Richard Turvey. What matters is that Maggie’s safely home and come to no harm. Now, Helen, get off to bed this instant and take Tich with you.’
Helen scowled, but her mother looked so angry she did as she was told. Jimmy following mutely behind. Mabel turned back to Maggie, determined to wipe the mutinous expression from her face.
‘You may think you know best, Maggie,’ she said sternly, ‘but you don’t know the half of it. I was the same at your age, thought I knew the answer to everything. But at twenty you don’t. I know what’s best for you and I’ve had enough of this obsession of yours. The likes of you and me can’t change the world, so stop trying.’
‘It’s not an obsession,’ Maggie began to protest, but her mother wasn’t listening.
‘Family comes first, understand? Your duty is to us. If you ever get into a scrape like this again, then there’ll be trouble, because I’ll not have you risking your job at Pearson’s for any fancy notions about equality or votes for women.’
‘But Mam—’
Her mother wagged a finger in warning. ‘And I’ll not have you mixing with law-breakers any more. You stay away from the likes of Rose Johnstone and those other unnatural creatures that call themselves women, do you hear?’
Maggie stared at her mother, appalled. She’d had no idea her mother was so prejudiced against the movement. When she had first joined the WSPU, Maggie was sure her mother had been proud of her showing an independent spirit and wanting to change things for the better. She had always been pushed to better herself. But perhaps Mabel’s interest had been superficial; a shallow pride in her daughter’s mixing with women of a different social class. Maggie looked into her mother’s tired, dark blue eyes and wondered if she believed in anything anymore.
Maggie wanted to shout back that her cause was not a childish whim which could be so easily given up. But she felt weak with shock and achingly tired. Her family’s opposition overwhelmed her. She knew it would be impossible to give up her friends and her mission, but she did not have the strength to stand up to her mother tonight.
She sighed in frustration, biting back her words of rebellion, and sank back into the pillow.
That night she slept with Granny Beaton, comforted by the old woman’s bony warmth and her lack of censure. She fell asleep to her grandmother’s soft Gaelic lullabies, just as she had so many times as a young girl, crying noiselessly for her dead father.
The next morning, she woke stiff but rested and was greeted by her smiling grandmother bringing in a cup of tea.
‘Here’s a
strupach
to revive you,’ she said, putting down the cup with shaky hands beside the bed. ‘You’re to stay in bed today, so you are.’
‘But I can’t,
’
Maggie said at once, wincing as she sat up. ‘I have to see . . .’ She stopped before Rose’s name was mentioned.
‘Whatever it is can wait,’ Granny Beaton was firm.
‘But it’s so important,’ Maggie cried weakly. ‘I’m not going to lie here when I should be...’
‘You know your mother won’t let you go out as you please anymore,’ Granny said quietly.
Maggie turned her head away as tears began to fall.
Granny Beaton leaned across in concern, stroking the dark hair away from Maggie’s pale forehead and bruised eye.
‘What is it, lassie?’ she asked gently. ‘You can tell me, right enough.’
Maggie looked into the old woman’s crinkled face, full of a lifetime’s suffering and wisdom, the faded brown eyes compassionate. She knew her grandmother was the only member of the family she could trust now, after her mother’s reprimand the previous night.
Maggie spoke low. ‘There’s an important meeting at Rose’s this afternoon - special work for me to do. If I don’t turn up they might think I’m too afraid to do it, they might offer it to someone else. They mustn’t think I don’t have the courage.’
‘Oh, you’ve got the courage, right enough,’ Granny said fondly, placing her smooth, dry old hands round Maggie’s face.
For a long moment they looked at each other in silent understanding and Maggie knew the old lady would support her.
‘A life of struggle is a hard one to choose,’ Granny said in her soft lilt, ‘but if that’s the one you’ve chosen, then may God give you strength.’ Then she added with a smile, ‘I’ll take a message to Miss Johnstone.
’
Maggie leant over and kissed her withered cheek. ‘I don’t want to land you in trouble too.’
‘Your mother is not a hard woman at heart,’ Granny said, ‘she just worries for you. As for me, I’m not afraid of trouble because God has always provided. I’ll go after Kirk; Miss Johnstone only lives a few minutes away.’
‘Thanks, Granny,’ Maggie said hoarsely, overcome by the old woman’s gesture, and leaned back on the hard bolster. It was routine for her grandmother to go to her own Presbyterian church while Susan led Helen and Jimmy to the Methodist’s on Alison Terrace every Sunday, so no one would suspect if the old woman was a few minutes late. They would just assume the sermon had been a long one. Maggie often accompanied her grandmother to the Kirk in Elswick, more out of habit than conviction, knowing that the old Highland lady liked her company walking to church. She knew where Rose lived because on several occasions they had visited the schoolteacher after guild meetings in the Kirk hall.
Maggie dozed and fretted until Granny Beaton returned at lunchtime. She went over in her mind the terrible events of the previous night as if they were the bizarre happenings of a nightmare. She began to doubt if she had indeed seen Richard at all, for if it had been him, would he not have spoken her name? She wished now she had never mentioned him, for it seemed to have inflamed her sisters and set everyone against her. Even Tich was not speaking to her this morning. It sickened her that they should see her attack as being her own fault.
Then Maggie thought of George Gordon’s concerned face staring down at hers in the tram and sent up another thankful prayer that he had intervened on her behalf. He at least had not condemned her.
‘Miss Johnstone said you’re not to worry,’ Granny Beaton managed to whisper to her while Susan and Jimmy set the table for lunch. ‘She’ll send a message when her visitor calls again.’
Maggie took the old woman’s veined hand and kissed it. ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed, swallowing her disappointment that her meeting with Emily Davison had been thwarted.
To Maggie’s distress, the family behaved as if the incident had never happened and never referred to it again. On Monday, Maggie struggled to work, pretending she had fallen downstairs and evading the curious questions of Eve Tindall and the wary looks of Mary Watson.
That evening, George Gordon called. Maggie felt ridiculously tongue-tied and gauche as she sat across the kitchen table from him. He had changed out of his grimy work clothes and was wearing the faded suit she had seen him in when they had sparred outside the pub on Alison Terrace. She remembered how scornful she had been of him then and blushed now at his awkward attempts at small talk.
‘Brought you some oranges,’ he said, pushing a bag across the rough scrubbed table top.
‘Oranges!’ Susan exclaimed ‘That’s kind of you,’ she answered for Maggie. ‘Oranges are that expensive.
’
‘Didn’t know what else to bring,’ George said with an embarrassed shrug.
‘No need to bring anything,’ Susan said, sweeping the package from the table and emptying the bright fruit into their best bowl, usually kept for nuts at Christmas time. ‘But thank you all the same.’
Maggie saw her sister look approvingly at George, her suspicion of his visit subsiding. She bustled over to the stove to replenish the teapot.
George cleared his throat. ‘You’re looking better,’ he said.
Maggie smiled. ‘Just a bit stiff, that’s all.’
Her mother eyed them over her sewing. ‘It could have been a lot worse. We’re grateful to you, George.’
‘Town’s a rough place at night,’ George grunted. ‘Better to sell your papers in the daytime, I reckon.’
‘There’ll be no more selling papers at any time of the day.’ Mabel was sharp. ‘Maggie’s to have no more to do with the suffragettes.’
George looked at Maggie in surprise and saw her mouth firm into a stubborn line. Her bruised grey eyes beseeched him.
‘I can’t see Maggie being put off by a bit of a scuffle,’ he found himself saying.
Maggie felt the lethargy of the past two days shaken by his words. She had had enough of bowing to her mother’s wishes. ‘I’m not put off,’ she spoke up defiantly, ‘and I’ll carry on supporting the cause as long as there’s breath in me lungs.’
She heard Susan clatter the kettle behind her in shock. Her mother glared. ‘I thought I made it clear to you—’
‘Aye, Mam, I know what you want,’ Maggie said quickly, ‘but I can’t stop believing in something just because you say so. It’s the most important thing in my life, can’t you see that?’ she pleaded.
Mabel’s face puffed out indignantly. ‘And what about your family? Are we to take second place behind your hoity-toity friends?’
‘Aye,’ Susan agreed, ‘you’ve got above yourself with all this nonsense.’
‘It’s not like that, Mam,’ Maggie insisted, ignoring Susan’s sour words. ‘I joined the movement because I want to make things better for widows like you, for young lasses like Susan and me, so we can have a better life than our mothers and grandmothers had.’ She looked at Granny Beaton for support and saw the old lady nod gently.
‘Aye, Mabel,’ she intercepted quietly, ‘the lassie should be admired for trying to change things. And I don’t see that selling a few wee newspapers does any harm to anybody.’
Mabel looked at her mother-in-law with annoyance, irritated that she should once again be taking Maggie’s side against her. If she had not been such a support to her in the early months after Alec’s death, she would have packed her back to Glasgow years ago. She had been too soft in letting her stay, Mabel realised now.
Maggie saw her give Granny Beaton a dismissive look and turn to George for support.
‘You’re a man, George Gordon,’ Mabel wheezed. ‘You talk some sense into this daughter of mine. I shudder to think what her father would have made of all this.’
George shifted uncomfortably on his hard chair, bewildered by the bickering.
‘Don’t bring me dad into this,’ Maggie said hotly. ‘You don’t know what he would have thought.’
‘I know he wouldn’t have approved of all this violence and carry-on by women,’ her mother huffed. ‘You don’t hold with these suffragettes, do you, George?’
‘George has got nothing to do with our quarrel,’ Maggie said defensively, afraid of what he might say.
‘Let him speak,’ Susan said, refilling his cup. ‘It’s time we heard a man’s opinion around here. It might have curbed your rebellious nature, Maggie, if we’d had a man around these past ten years.’
George met Maggie’s stormy look. She was quite different from her fair, plump-faced sister or her querulous mother. Maggie’s features were slim and feline, her hair dark and wiry, her eyes angry and restless. Whereas the others seemed to have tired, blighted spirits, Maggie seemed full of a fierce energy. He found it exciting, disturbing. He admired the warrior within her and he knew if he joined the censorious band against her he would lose her respect and the possibility of friendship for ever. All at once, he realised that he minded what she thought of him and yearned for the chance to know her better.
‘I think Maggie’s naive to think giving women the vote will change things for working-class women,’ George began cautiously. Mabel and Susan nodded in approval. ‘But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a bit of militancy. You can’t deny the suffragettes have got guts and I admire them for keeping on at the government, being prepared to be unpopular, suffering in prison for what they believe. There’re not many men would do as much, least of all those in power. I think Maggie should be allowed to keep on at her work for the women’s movement - long as she avoids the Bigg Market on a Saturday night.’