Authors: Janet MacLeod Trotter
Maggie was shocked by the vehemence of the rebuff. Was it true that George could be so bitter towards her for marrying John?
‘I don’t believe you,’ she answered angrily. ‘Where will I find him?’
Irene folded her arms and stared at her tight-lipped.
‘Tell me this, Irene,’ Maggie glared at the hostile woman. ‘Did you tell your brother that I’d written to him when he was in France, but that me letter was returned - that you returned it to me?’
‘What difference would that have made?’ Irene said disdainfully.
‘It would have shown George that I cared for him, that I’d been thinking of him,’ Maggie answered with emotion, ‘that...’ She stopped herself blurting out that she had been carrying George’s child. She was not going to give Irene the satisfaction of gloating over her disgrace or misfortune.
And as Maggie thought of it, she was not even sure if she should tell George of their child, for he could do nothing now to change the situation. He would only suffer the more, torturing himself about what might have been, as she had done these past years, Maggie thought.
If he really despised her now for abandoning his memory so soon and marrying another man, then perhaps it was better for him not to know about Christabel. She could do nothing to alleviate his bitterness or unhappiness, so maybe it was better if he hated her and got over her than be burdened with the knowledge of what she had suffered - still suffered!
‘Just tell him I came - to say sorry,’ Maggie said in a tight voice.
Irene stood silent and stony-faced in the doorway and Maggie doubted George would ever hear of her visit. She turned and hurried from the mean cottage and the blackened street, the hissing and clanking of the pit chasing her away. No wonder George had chosen to leave home so young, Maggie thought as she fled, hardly able to breathe in the dank, grimy air.
She caught a tram on Alison Terrace that took her swiftly uptown, determining never to visit the Gordons again. If George had decided to blame her for all his ills, then let him, Maggie thought defiantly. She would forget him and make the most of the life she had.
Spring returned and Maggie recovered some of her old energy. Since being rescued from the workhouse her health had steadily improved and her limp grew less troublesome as her limbs strengthened with all the walking she did into town and back. She enjoyed her work at the Co-operative Guild, but by summer increasingly felt the need for something more. Susan, with Jimmy’s regular wages coming in, had opened up a second-hand clothes shop on the Scotswood Road while a mellowing Aunt Violet and their old neighbour, Mary Smith, looked after the children. Although Susan said nothing directly, Maggie felt her sister now wished to manage without her help or John’s money and so she began to keep out of Susan’s way, apart from Sunday teatime visits at Sandyford.
What gave Maggie her greatest pleasure were the occasional visits from Alice Pearson and the children. She delighted in seeing Christabel develop, marvelling at each new word and accomplishment that she revealed. The warm weather arrived and they went for picnics in Jesmond Dene and once Alice drove them down to the seaside where they paddled and ate sandwiches on the sand and bought ice creams from an open stall.
‘I’ve never done this before,’ Alice admitted candidly. ‘Fancy not discovering the delights of the seaside until my age!’
‘You’re never too old to gan plodging in the sea,’ Maggie replied, holding Christabel’s hand as they walked along the promenade.
‘What’s plodging?’ Henry asked. ‘It sounds a stupid word to me.’ He had had a term at boarding school and was more distant, affecting an air of maturity and bored tolerance of the childish enthusiasm of the adults.
‘Plodging?’ Maggie echoed. ‘Plodging’s plodging - getting your feet wet in the sea.’
‘Papa and Mama are in France and Mama wrote and said the beaches are much better there than in England. I bet they don’t plodge in France,’ he said with a superior look.
‘Well, maybes you’ll go there one day and find out,’ Maggie laughed.
‘Oh, I will,’ Henry said earnestly. ‘Papa promised he’d take me one day - when I’m older.’
Maggie and Alice exchanged brief looks, each aware of the boy’s yearning to be noticed by his father. Then Christabel tugged on Maggie’s hand.
‘Auntie Maggie, look! Look!’ the small girl cried in wonder as she pointed to a troupe of players performing in the open air.
‘That’s Pierrot,
’
Maggie told her, ‘and the lass is Columbine. Her partner’s the one with the fancy costume; Harlequin.’
‘Me see!’ Christabel shouted excitedly.
‘Course you can, pet,’ Maggie smiled and lifted the girl into her arms with a kiss. It was a source of wonder to Maggie that she could feel so attached to this child. It had always been Susan who had been credited with the maternal feelings, while she had been called the hard one, showing impatience with everything except politics, so her mother and sisters had declared. But loving Christabel had shown her that it was possible to do both and Maggie hoped she had grown more aware of the feelings of others, more tolerant. She often wondered about Alice, a seemingly solitary woman, hiding behind her camera. Yet here she was enjoying this seaside trip like an excited child. Did she love Christabel too?
It became increasingly hard saying goodbye to her daughter at the end of the visits and there were long periods while Alice was away in London when she did not see Christabel at all. It was towards the end of the summer that Maggie’s restlessness and her dissatisfaction with her quiet, orderly life grew intolerable.
John noticed her impatience and short temper with alarm. He had been so relieved to see her regain her old enthusiasm for life and work after the trauma of discovering George Gordon was still alive. Maggie had never told him what had happened after her visit to Benwell, but he knew she had been because one of his customers mentioned it soon afterwards. He did not pry; he was just thankful that she appeared to be over him and that they had resumed their intimacy in the marital bed.
But this new brooding made him anxious once more, for he saw the boredom on her face, the frustration after visits from Christabel. His worst fear was that she would tire of living with a man twice her age, turn to Gordon and run off with him.
‘You need a new cause, Maggie,’ he told her one September afternoon while they strolled aimlessly through the Dene and watched children playing by the side of the burn. ‘Why don’t you come and help more at the mission?’
Maggie stopped and gazed at two boys who were jumping in and out of a rock pool. She did not reply.
‘You have so much experience of the knocks life can give,’ John continued, ‘that you seem wasted in what you’re doing. You’re a campaigner, Maggie, you could be using your gifts to better the lives of others.’
Maggie felt stung by his gentle rebuke that she was choosing a safe, quiet life, content to snatch at the small precious moments with her daughter that were granted her. But then she was no longer content. It echoed her own feeling that she should not be settling for a half-life of middle-class comforts and these fleeting moments with a daughter who still thought of her as a kindly friend of her aunt’s. She would never be fully responsible for Christabel as a mother should be, she told herself brutally, and she could not go through the rest of her life waiting for those brief, unreal times together when she played a game of make-believe, pretending that the child was legally hers.
Maggie turned pained eyes on her husband. ‘You’re right, John,’ she answered heavily. ‘I’m wasting my time waiting for the day Christabel will become mine again. It’s never going to happen, is it? In a year or two she’ll have a governess to tell her how to behave and probably won’t be allowed to visit me anymore. Or she’ll be sent off to boarding school like Henry and will soon learn to be too embarrassed to visit the likes of us.’
John moved close. ‘We don’t know that. Ideas have changed since the war; people aren’t prepared to put up with so much class restriction.’
‘It hasn’t changed so you’d notice,’ Maggie replied scornfully.
‘Well, put your energies into changing things then,’ he challenged her. ‘You women won a great victory with the vote last year, but there’re plenty more injustices to right. Where’s your suffragette spirit gone to, Maggie?’
Angered, she retorted, ‘It’s gone nowhere. I still feel strongly about improving things for women. But I’m not as pig-headed.’ She glanced at him, flushing. ‘I admit now I used to think everything was either black or white and that everything I did was right. And perhaps I didn’t always do the best thing but I always believed I did, so I’m not afraid of being judged for it.’
Her look was defiant, but her voice was more controlled as she went on, ‘But I now see that society’s problems are more tangled. It’s not just a matter of changing the law and everything will be champion. Nothing will change unless what goes on in people’s heads change. I remember thinking so in St Chad’s when I saw the look of contempt on the bosses’ faces. I thought, they’re not seeing me, they’re looking at me crime - if crime it was to bear that beautiful lass. We’ve got so many small battles to fight to make things better for women, it’s not just the big campaigns that matter.
’
John regarded her. ‘So what are you going to do about it? Tear down St Chad’s? It may be a dismal place but it’s somewhere for the very poor to go to.’
Maggie returned his steady look. Now was the time to speak of what had been occupying her mind for months. ‘To lead by example rather than tell people how to lead their lives. Isn’t that what you’re always preaching is the Christian way?’
John nodded.
‘Aye, well that’s what I want to do.’
‘Go on.’ John observed her closely. Maggie took a deep breath.
‘I want to improve things for lasses like me - the ones who find themselves at the bottom of the heap, unmarried and penniless and carrying someone’s bastard child.’ Her eyes blazed at him in defiance as she expressed her ideas. John kept quiet, willing her to go on.
‘If I had the money, I’d set up a home for lasses to live in, a decent place, a safe place, where they wouldn’t be treated like the very devil and made to scrub floors until their babies dropped. They’d be allowed visitors - family, fathers of their bairns - not just locked away out of sight until it’s all over.’ Maggie started to walk as her ideas took shape. ‘But it wouldn’t end there with the birth of the baby,’ she continued. ‘The bairns wouldn’t be just whipped away and never seen again. Their mams would be allowed to keep them while they had a decent confinement, recovered from the birth.’ She looked at her husband for encouragement.
John pursed his lips, unsettled by the idea. ‘It sounds all very humane, Maggie,’ he frowned, ‘but if it’s all made so easy, won’t it just encourage immorality among young women?’
Maggie bristled at the suggestion. ‘Why do men assume it’s always the women who are immoral?’ she demanded in annoyance. ‘To my mind it’s society that’s immoral treating lasses with such cruelty while the men take no responsibility. The hypocrisy makes me stomach turn. It may offend your sense of propriety, John, but there will always be vulnerable lasses who find themselves in such a state. What they need is somewhere they’ll be cared for and not judged and condemned for the rest of their lives. Lasses like us may not get to heaven, but at least we can ask for a brief haven from a hostile world.
’
John regarded her warily. ‘And afterwards, when the baby is born? What then?’
Maggie stopped and spoke more calmly. ‘I would actively seek employment for them, jobs where they could keep their bairns with them, or help them find lodgings and get started in the world again with a bit support and money. Reconcile them with their families if they’ve got them. When I think what a difference a bit help would’ve done me at the right time ...’
Maggie stopped herself, not meaning any criticism of John, for had she known the depths of his compassion she would have gone to him in her need rather than turning to the workhouse. But she had been too proud, too full of guilt and grief for the loss of her lover to do anything but run and hide her shame in St Chad’s until it was all over.
‘And how will you fund such a home?’ John pressed her.
Maggie let out a long breath as she thought it through. ‘In Utopia,’ she said with a twitch of a smile, ‘it would be funded by the state, for all lasses, no matter what their class. But barring a revolution, I need to find a wealthy patron, I suppose.’
They looked at each other in understanding.
‘Have you spoken of this to Miss Alice yet?’ John asked.
Maggie shook her head. ‘Not yet, but I will. She’s never exactly said so, but I think she’s still trying to pay a debt to the suffrage movement. She once told me that she felt responsible for encouraging her old friend Emily Davison to go to Epsom. I think it’s still on her mind.’
John gave Maggie a questioning smile. ‘The Emily Davison Memorial Home then?’
***
Maggie was swift to follow up her plan and called on Alice Pearson at Hebron House in early October when she heard she was back from London. It felt very strange entering through the high iron gates and passing the summerhouse she had once burnt down. Yet it was here also that her passion for suffragism had been fuelled, sitting in Alice’s vast, elegant drawing room listening to the inspiring voice of Emily Davison all those years ago.
She was surprised at how shabby the house looked now, then remembered that for part of the war it had been taken over by the army. Only a section of the grand old house appeared to be used, with a whole flank of windows shuttered against the wind and Maggie caught a glimpse of white dustsheets covering furniture in a downstairs room.
She took tea with Alice in a small, cosy sitting room where she felt at ease spelling out her ideas.
‘I’m interested,’ the older woman nodded reflectively, ‘but I think it would be important to gather other subscribers to such a scheme. I myself don’t have any great personal wealth, despite what you see around you.’