Authors: Janet MacLeod Trotter
Yet she managed to meet other suffragettes in discreet tearooms in the east of the city, in parlours of sympathetic supporters. She frequently wondered what Alice Pearson thought of her now, but all she could learn about the magnate’s daughter was that she was touring on the Continent.
Maggie continued to work part-time for the coal merchant and in the evenings she looked forward eagerly to George’s return from the shipyard.
Sometimes she shook her head in amazement at how they had been thrown together in adversity. She had thought it impossible that she would find such a soul-mate in a man, least of all in a man like George Gordon, raised in a tough community that took men’s superiority over women for granted. But beneath his brawny, aggressive stance, George was as much an idealist as she was.
At night they would curl up by the small fire and express aloud their dreams of how they would better the world together. Sometimes they went to the house of a friend of George’s, a Jewish musician called Isaac Samuel who attracted around him a small group of intellectuals. George had met him at the Pearson library and been amazed by the thin, bearded Russian who had fled persecution and arrived on a merchant vessel up the Tyne. He scraped a living by giving music lessons, while his sister Miriam took in sewing.
Maggie enjoyed the cosy evenings in Isaac’s over-furnished rooms, sitting among chairs strewn with music and books, arguing with the others about religion and imperialism, capitalism and the new Bolshevism seeping out of Russia. She was the only woman who took part in the discussions; the enigmatic Miriam chose instead to read or embroider by the corner lamp, unperturbed by their arguing.
‘Lenin’s right,’ George announced one evening. ‘The workers need to organise more into a revolutionary force. Organise and protest - disrupt production if necessary. Not like our lot who allow the bosses to divide them into different classes, so each thinks they’re a step above the others.
’
‘But your bosses,’ Isaac Samuel said with a wave of his long bony hands, ‘allow a great freedom of speech among the working classes. You have open-air meetings and say things that would get you shot in my Russia.’
‘There’s precious little freedom of speech for us lasses,’ Maggie interjected.
‘Ah, the lasses,’ Isaac nodded his bearded face. ‘In Russia they are respected once they are old and toothless.’
Maggie laughed and shook her head.
‘But the working classes here have been bought off,’ George said, returning to what preoccupied him. ‘Every time we organise and push for more rights, they build us a park or an institute or a church to keep us quiet and grateful.
’
‘Or a library to read in,’ Isaac mentioned with the ghost of a smile.
‘Or a rowing club to compete in,’ Maggie added, grinning at their host.
George, realising they were teasing him, grunted. ‘All right, I’m just as easily bought as the next man. But reading and sport should be there for everyone, not dependent on the whim of some patron whose money was made by the sweat of the workers anyhow.’
Miriam rose and poured them all tea from a huge hissing and steaming machine they called a samovar and the discussion changed to religion. George would have none of it in his workers’ Utopia, while Maggie and Isaac demanded complete freedom to worship without persecution.
‘The Sabbath was invented to occupy the working classes, so they wouldn’t cause trouble on their day off,’ George announced, playing devil’s advocate.
‘If it wasn’t for God and the Sabbath,’ Isaac parried with a smile, ‘the working classes would not have their day off.’
‘It’s hardly a day off for the women anyway,’ Maggie reminded them quickly. ‘They still have to dress the bairns in their Sunday best and slave over the stove making the Sunday dinner, then clear up while the men sleep it off.’
‘Sounds like paradise, doesn’t it, Isaac?’ George winked.
Maggie gave him a playful push. Miriam promptly invited them to lunch on Sunday without glancing up from her sewing and Maggie realised that the quiet, grey-haired woman had been listening all along.
Later, stamping through the raw, dimly lit streets, oblivious of the cold and energised by their debate, they hastened to bed and made love.
At times Maggie felt utterly free and fulfilled by her new life, but at others she was overwhelmed by a desire to see her mother and family and return to the streets where she grew up. The wanting would start as a dull nagging, like mild toothache, then worsen into a sharp pain of needing that left her irritable and restless. As the winter wore on with no missions to undertake for the WSPU, Maggie felt her inaction and creeping guilt about neglecting her family grip her like a malaise. Worst of all, she found she could not talk to George of her mixed feelings towards her family. He bristled when she mentioned them and bad-mouthed them for rejecting her, so that it was better to keep her worries to herself.
But every so often, George would catch her lifting the window blind and gazing out over the rooftops, preoccupied.
‘What’s wrong, pet?’ he asked one dark Saturday in late February. The sky was the colour of gun metal and had never grown more than half light all day.
She let the blind drop and sighed.
Her bouts of restlessness made George nervous, his greatest fear being that she would tire of her restricted life with him and return to her family. He wanted them always to be together, would have proposed marriage if she had not declared so forcefully that marriage was a form of enslavement for women that needed thorough reform in law before she would entertain it. They seemed to be of one mind on so much, George thought irritably, and yet he was aware of her holding back from him - not physically - but somewhere deep within her being.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she answered glumly.
‘It’s your mam, isn’t it?’ George said, a note of irritation creeping into his voice.
‘Aye,’ Maggie admitted abruptly. She was tired of pretending that nothing was wrong. ‘The last time I saw her she looked that poorly.’
‘We’d have heard if anything had happened.’
‘Geordie!’ Maggie was hurt. ‘Am I supposed to wait around until I hear she’s kicked the bucket? Wait for Mr Heslop to come creeping round like a ghoul with bad news?
’
‘If that preacher sets foot near here again, I’ll kick his self-righteous backside into next week!’
‘You shouldn’t speak about him like that,’ Maggie said, crossing her arms in front of her. ‘Mr Heslop came here out of the best of reasons, to try and get me to gan to Susan’s wedding. And perhaps I should’ve - I feel that bad about it. I haven’t spoken to me sister or even sent her a gift - I’ve done nothing for her.’
‘And why should you?’ George replied indignantly, remembering how Susan had shown her disapproval of him. ‘She turned her back on you when you went to prison, remember,’ he said, his temper growing with his anxiety. ‘Why should you bother with her now?’
Maggie was annoyed to be reminded of how her family had been quick to disown her over the launch episode. She realised suddenly how much their rejection hurt, not just her sisters’ open hostility but her mother’s seeming acceptance that she was no longer part of the family.
‘It’s not just Susan and me mam,’ Maggie answered crossly. ‘I want to see Granny - and Tich. I -I miss them.’
‘Am I not enough family for you then?’ George asked, at once hating his carping words.
‘That’s not fair, Geordie. You can go and see your family any day of the week. It’s not my fault if you’re not close to them and don’t visit from one month to the next.’
George was stung with guilt and anger at her words. ‘The only reason I’ve stopped going regularly is to protect you! They don’t even know where to find me if me old man drops dead.’
‘They can fetch you from work,’ Maggie pointed out harshly. ‘But I might as well be dead for all my family know about me.’
‘Perhaps that’s the way they want it,’ George said in a quiet, hard voice. ‘Then they can forget the shame you’ve brought them.’
Maggie stared at her lover, wounded by his words and the awful realisation that they might be true. After all, none of her family had tried to contact her, only Heslop had come seeking her and been shocked by what he found.
‘Is that what you think?’ Maggie hissed. ‘That I’m someone to be ashamed of?’
‘That’s not what I said!’ George answered crossly.
‘But it’s what you mean!’ Maggie cried in panic. ‘It suits you to keep me cooped up here in secret, doesn’t it? I’m just a fancy bit that you don’t want your family or workmates to know about, is that it? My God, you’re just as conventional as the rest of them, George Gordon!’
George was furious; furious at the accusations and furious that this row had blown up so unexpectedly and uncontrollably.
‘How could you even think that was all I wanted you for?’ George shouted. ‘Well, gan back to your precious family if you think they’ll have you! But don’t blame me if they turn you over to the coppers as soon as you get there.’ He stopped pacing about the tiny parlour and grabbed his jacket from the nail behind the door.
‘Where’re you going?’ Maggie demanded, not wanting him to leave but too upset to say so.
‘Out - anywhere. To see me old dad that you say I’ve neglected and then maybes for a pint with Billy or Joshua. Aye, I feel like having a skinful. And what’s it matter to you if I do?’ he glared.
‘Matters nowt!’ Maggie shouted back at him. ‘That’s the way you lads always save the world, isn’t it? Over a bucket of beer!’
George raised a menacing finger and stabbed the air. ‘And when has breaking windows ever benefited anyone except glaziers?’ he said full of scorn.
‘Aye, gan on and mock me!’ she cried, advancing on him. ‘But it’s the closest you’ll ever get to revolution, Geordie. You’re all talk and no action. You’re as conservative as they come.’
George cursed and slammed the door in her face. She heard him running down the stairs away from her. Shaking, Maggie slumped to the cold bare floorboards, angry and hurt and bewildered by their sudden argument that had flared out of nothing.
No, not nothing, she thought. It had been simmering for weeks. Ever since Heslop had burst into their haven and fuelled her guilt at abandoning her family.
Maggie realised with a heavy heart that she could never escape her past and the messy tangle of obligations and emotions that bound her to her relations. No matter what lengths she went to erase her former life, she was still a Beaton.
Shivering in the cold gloom of the room that suddenly seemed lifeless and depressing without George, Maggie yearned for the chaotic comfort of Gun Street. Picking herself up from the floor, she knew she had to go there. At that moment she wanted her mother’s solid arms about her more than anything in the world.
It was late afternoon when Maggie reached Gun Street and to her bafflement and disappointment no one answered her knocking at the upstairs flat. As she hammered for a third time, Mary Smith popped her head out from the flat below.
‘No one’s there, hinny,’ she called at the shadowy figure. ‘Can I help?’
‘It’s me, Mrs Smith. Maggie.’
For a moment there was silence, then Mary Smith screeched, ‘It’s never!’ She advanced out of the door and up the first few steps. ‘Where have you been hiding yourself, hinny? Your mam’s been that worried. Eeh, and you missed Susan’s wedding. She looked a picture.’ Mary reached out and pulled Maggie by the arm. ‘Come in an’ have a cup of tea with me. They’ll not be long. Your Susan’s giving them all their tea at your Aunt Violet’s.’
Maggie needed little persuasion to keep her old neighbour company. She could not bear the thought of returning to the empty rooms in Arthur’s Hill and no longer knew if she was welcome there. They sat by the stove, drinking tea while Maggie listened to Mary Smith chatter on about the family and Susan’s wedding and how well Mr Turvey was doing.
‘Always so nicely turned out, is Mr Turvey,’ she said in approval. ‘And Susan’s never too busy to visit her mam. Over here every day, she is. Course she’s always been close to her mam - a real one for family.’
Maggie winced at the unintentional criticism but let the garrulous, lonely woman continue.
‘That Helen’s full of mischief, mind. Needles your Susan whenever she can. If you ask me,’ Mary said, leaning closer and dropping her voice as if someone might hear, ‘she shows Mr Turvey too much attention when he comes round. She’s going to be a terrible one for the lads. Don’t say a word of this to your mam, mind. She’s got enough to worry about with Granny Beaton and Jimmy.’
‘What do you mean?’ Maggie asked in concern.
‘Well, with your grandmother wetting the bed all the time and wandering off like a bairn. And Tich packing in his job because he thinks he can get summat better. He’s turning into a right tearaway - he’s out now somewhere with my Tommy. The devil knows where they get to.’
Suddenly Maggie could not stay another minute. She wanted to rush out and find her mother and hug her and ask forgiveness for the worry she had put her through.
‘Mrs Smith,’ Maggie said, putting her cup down on the hearth, ‘ta for the tea but—’
A door banged open in the hall.
‘That’ll be your mam back, I expect,’ Mary Smith said with a nod.
Maggie jumped up and rushed to the door, opening it without another word. Under the fuzzy gas light, she made out three wrapped figures, the one with a stick being helped in by the other two.
‘Mam! Granny Beaton!’ Maggie cried and dashed forward. ‘Helen!’
For a moment they all gawped at her as if they had seen a ghost, then her mother put out a hand and clutched her arm as if to convince herself she was real.
‘Maggie?’ she gasped. ‘Eeh, Maggie, you little bugger!’
Her mother’s arms went about her in a cold damp hug of delight and Maggie clung to her, not sure whether she was laughing or crying.
‘Get yourself upstairs this minute,’ Mabel ordered her daughter, pulling away with a sniff, ‘and you can tell us everything.’ She shouted at her mother-in-law, ‘It’s Maggie, Mrs Beaton, she’s come home. Maggie,’ she repeated to the deaf old woman.
‘Oh, Maggie,’ her grandmother smiled, understanding. ‘Dear lassie.’