I’ll Bring You Buttercups

‘But do you know, those three years haven’t been wasted, because they gave me time to think about what I really wanted to do with my life, and one of the things that came out of it was the certain fact that I wanted to choose my husband for myself.’

‘Choose your own –’ Alice gasped. But the upper classes never chose their own husbands!

‘Indeed. And what was more, my mother said I might. She even said Pa would have agreed with her, too, because though their marriage was arranged, they’d been in love for ages beforehand, and kept it a secret.’

‘Oh, how lovely.’ Tears misted Alice’s eyes and she felt suddenly closer to her employer’s daughter and found herself hoping that she too could know the joy of loving and being loved. ‘And maybe you’ll meet him, soon. Maybe he might be just around the next corner.’

‘The next corner we come to will be Speakers Corner and I’m almost sure that the only men who’ll be around there will be policemen and I very much doubt –’

‘Look, miss! Over yonder!’ Alice pointed excitedly to the roadway and the carriage drawn by two splendid white horses. ‘Those horses! There’s a wish on a white horse. One for you and one for me. Close your eyes and cross your fingers and wish, quickly, afore they’re out of sight!’

Foolishly, fervently, they wished, neither confiding in the other, for both knew that a wish shared was a wish wasted, and Alice let go her indrawn breath and opened her eyes and Julia did the same. Then smiling, she said, ‘We mustn’t tell, Hawthorn.’

‘No, we mustn’t.’ But oh, when Miss Julia met him, let him be tall and broad and handsome and let him be rich enough to keep her in the manner to which she’d been born – please?

It seemed there would be no meeting that night; at least, not at Hyde Park Corner, for there was no gathering of waiting women, no banners, no policemen lurking.

‘Shall we go back, miss?’ Alice murmured with relief. ‘Looks as if nothing’s going to happen, and if we go home by way of the bandstand, perhaps there’ll be music.’

‘No, Hawthorn. We must stay just a little longer. Someone might come.’

They sat down again, stubbornly to wait it out, for it stood to sense, didn’t it, that forewarned was forearmed, Julia declared. If the police knew exactly when a meeting was to be held, they could all the more easily prevent it. The police, she flung, were the instruments of their masters, the Government, and wasn’t that government made up entirely of men; men ruling women’s lives?

‘It’s the way of the world,’ Alice reasoned forlornly, for she would rather have listened to the band. She was not interested in politics because not for a minute would men even consider giving the vote to women. It would make a woman a man’s equal, almost, and men would never stand for that.

A woman carrying a child over her shoulder walked past them and Julia nodded her head in the direction of the pale-faced mother.

‘Look at her. Not a lot older than I am, I shouldn’t wonder, yet that’s her life for the foreseeable future – a baby or a miscarriage every year. And why? Simply because her husband doesn’t know any better!’

‘But that’s what they call nature, Miss Julia. It’s the way things are.’

‘It needn’t be. They don’t have to wear themselves out having children they can’t afford. If they listened to Doctor Stopes, and people who think like her, it needn’t.’

Alice’s mouth made an ooh of protest, for she had heard of the young woman who advocated birth control. Disgusting, Cook said it was, and not fit for a young girl’s ears and if women didn’t want to have babies there was one sure and certain remedy. Let them stay unwed!

‘Ooooh, miss, where do you hear of such things?’ But that was what came, she supposed, of sending a girl to a boarding school. Julia Sutton wouldn’t have been exposed to such free thinking at the Church of England school in Holdenby village.

‘Learn? You read, I suppose, and you listen. And if ever you get the chance, you reason calmly and sensibly. And you keep on and on, like the suffragettes are doing, until men take notice of what you say.’

‘And is that why you aren’t married or spoken for – is it because of the way you think?’

‘No, Hawthorn. I want to be married, but only to the right man. And until I meet him I shall go on sticking up for women and –’

‘And getting yourself disliked, miss, if you’ll pardon me. You don’t want to end up a lonely old lady, do you, like Miss Sutton?’

‘But my aunt isn’t lonely and, what’s more, she does precisely what she wants. Aunt Sutton thinks more of good food and good horseflesh than about husbands. That’s why she’s always taking off for the Camargue – it’s where the men worship horses and the women are all fine cooks, she says. She’d live there all the time if she could.’

‘And does Miss Sutton believe as you do; does she believe women should have the vote and not have babies unless they want them?’

‘I really don’t know. It’s not a subject one discusses with family. But Aunt Sutton is broad-minded and very forward-thinking and I wouldn’t mind betting she agrees with everything I say.

‘And you mustn’t breathe one word at Rowangarth of what I’ve said tonight – not to anyone – nor that we’ve been looking for a meeting, because it would upset my mother and I wouldn’t do that for all the votes in the world. So you promise, Hawthorn, don’t you?’

‘I promise.’ Not one word would she breathe. Ever.

‘Good. And it looks as if we might as well give up and come back another night and – oh – look …’

‘Where?’ Alice frowned uneasily.

‘By the big gate. A woman, and she’s selling something,’ Julia pointed. ‘She’s giving out handbills – or is it newspapers?’ She was off as fast as her skirt would allow in the direction of the gate and the several women who had appeared from nowhere. ‘Come on, Hawthorn. Oh, damn this stupid skirt!’

The woman who sold papers was tall and slim, with hair swept back in waves around a high-cheeked face. She asked one penny for the single sheet of print which was headed, to Julia’s great joy, The Suffragette.

‘Thank you,’ she gasped, handing over a sixpenny piece and waving away the change. ‘And can you tell me where the next meeting will be? Tonight, is it? Will there be any use in waiting?’

‘Sorry, my dear, not yet. Not just yet. Not safe, you see …’ She handed a sheet to the young, pale-faced mother. ‘But soon. Perhaps in Trafalgar Square. Maybe on Wednesday.’

She spoke in short, anxious sentences, her eyes swivelling right and left as they were joined by more women.

‘Not tonight, ladies,’ she called softly. ‘They know. They’re watching …’

They had known and they had watched and waited, and now they marched purposefully across the road; four constables, headed by a police sergeant riding a black horse.

They advanced on the group of women as though they had expected the paper-seller to be there; held their truncheons at the ready as a warning to all who saw them that they meant to use them.

‘Cor! The perlice! Blimey, wouldn’t yer just know it!’

‘Don’t go, ladies!’ called a bespectacled woman. ‘We’re doing nothing wrong. We have every right to buy a news-sheet. Don’t let them frighten you,’ she urged.

‘Miss – let’s go?’ Alice wanted no truck with the police who could arrest any one of them and march her off to the nearest lock-up to cool her heels in a cell for the night. ‘I promised her ladyship I’d look after you and I don’t think we should stay.’

‘You do what you like, Hawthorn, but I’m staying. Like she said, we’ve every right to be here. It isn’t a meeting and I won’t be bullied!’

‘No, miss, but it looks like a meeting.’ Now a score or more women had gathered. ‘But if you’re set on it, then I’ll stay, too.’ Alice closed her eyes and swallowed hard. ‘But don’t say anything, will you, or they’ll have just the excuse they want to lock you up.’

‘I’ll not harass them if they don’t harass me,’ Julia said quietly. ‘But I have every right to be here and so have we all and I’m not going to turn tail and run as if we’re up to something!’

‘But we are up to something – at least we would be, if we could. They know what we’re here for.’

What Miss Julia was here for, she mentally corrected, because she, Alice, would rather have been anywhere than gathering in the defence of a woman who sold news-sheets about votes for women.

‘They can’t prove what we’re here for, and if we don’t make trouble they can do nothing about it. So stay beside me and don’t be afraid, Hawthorn. I won’t let them hurt you.’

And that might have been the end of it, had they all of them listened to what the sergeant on the black horse had to say and quietly gone home.

‘There’ll be no meeting tonight,’ he’d said, ‘so be off to your homes, all of you, and you’ll hear no more about it. And you, Davison – pack up those papers and be off, or I’ll have you inside again, soon as look at you!’

If they had listened and acted on advice that was sound enough, Alice conceded … But they had not. They had stood there, all of them, pretending not to have heard, saying not a word, clutching their news-sheets. It might still have been all right had someone not thrown a cricket ball and knocked off a constable’s helmet; a well-aimed, masterful throw that sent it flying, and the constable’s dignity with it.

It was all the sergeant needed. A cricket ball was a missile and the throwing of a missile at an officer of the law was an arrestable offence.

‘Right! That’ll do!’ He pointed to the law-breaker who stood, chin set defiantly, as if she wanted to be arrested; because why else, Alice reasoned desperately, should a woman carry a cricket ball if she wasn’t set on throwing it at someone?

The sergeant urged forward his horse, scattering the women, followed by truncheon-waving police who grabbed their victim roughly and hurried her off to the horse-drawn cab with windows of darkened glass, ready and waiting but a few yards away, as if they had known – or intended – that there would be arrests.

‘Leave her alone!’ The challenge had been made and taken up by those set on confrontation; those determined that one of their own should not be taken away without at least some protest.

‘Bullies! Take your hands off her!’

‘Pick on someone yer own size!’

‘Like knockin’ women about, do yer?’

The pushing and shoving and shin-kicking began then, and more helmets were sent flying, and such screeching and screaming arose that Alice would have taken to her heels had not Julia been intent upon staying. And not only on staying, but on cat-calling and digging her elbows sharply into any uniform that came her way. Then she really excelled herself. All at once her face went bright pink and she let out a yell of indignation.

‘How dare you! How dare you strike a lady!’ She flung herself in front of the pale-faced young woman who had walked past them only minutes ago. ‘You did it deliberately. I saw you. And a child in her arms, too!’ She kicked out wildly, her skirt pulled shockingly above her knees.

Miss Julia had taken leave of her senses, yet even then, Alice was to think later, she might have got away with it had not she, who should have been looking after her mistress, suddenly taken leave of her own senses and joined in the affray, giving the policeman an almighty shove from behind, knocking him off balance, sending all fourteen stone of him hurtling at Miss Julia, taking her down with him in a flail of arms and legs.

Alice would always remember the thud as that poor head hit the ground, and she would never forget, not if she lived to be a hundred, the sight of that defenceless face with blood already trickling down it.

‘Brute!’ Alice shrieked, on her knees in an instant. ‘I saw what you did, you great bully! Out of my way and let me see to her,’ she flung at a bewildered constable, still sprawled on hands and knees and wondering at the fury directed at him from behind. ‘Get a doctor, before she bleeds to death. Go on! Do as you’re bid!’ How dare he? He’d fallen bang on top of Miss Julia; done it on purpose, and him putting on an expression of innocence. ‘Oh, miss, open your eyes?’ Alice patted the marble-white cheeks. ‘Oh, Lor’ …’

There was a sudden silence as though neither side had intended it should go this far and realized the folly of it too late.

‘I said fetch a doctor!’ Alice yelled. ‘And give her some air. Don’t stand there, gawping!’

‘Let me through. And do as the young lady asks. I am a doctor. I’ll see to her, and the rest of you be away to your homes – at once!’

And not, if she lived to be a hundred and one, Alice thought fervently, would she forget her relief as the young man took off his hat and removed his gloves, then felt with sure, gentle fingers for the pulse at Julia’s wrist.

As if they had never been, the women were gone. Only the policemen remained, dusting down their uniforms, retrieving lost helmets, returning truncheons to back pockets.

‘Is there any need for you to stay, sergeant?’ the doctor asked quietly.

‘If you think she’s all right, doctor; not badly hurt, I mean?’

‘She’ll do, but I’d like to get her home and have a look at her. Do you know where she lives?’ he asked of Alice.

‘Yes, sir. Not far away – the other side of the park.’

‘Then if I could have the use of your – er – conveyance, officer, to get her there, I’d be obliged. I take it she isn’t under arrest?’

‘No. I’m prepared to look the other way this time.’

‘And when she comes round,’ Alice gasped, ‘I’m sure my young lady will be prepared to do the same.’

But it was all her fault, she admitted silently. She shouldn’t have pushed the big policeman quite so roughly, even though he’d been a threat to Miss Julia and the young mother. Oh, what a mess they were in, and when would Miss Julia open her eyes?

‘There now – that’s better,’ said the strange young man, who shifted and swayed into focus as Julia blinked open her eyes.

‘Who? Where …’

‘You are safely home, ma’am, and I am a doctor.’

‘Oh, my head …’ The room tilted, then righted itself. ‘And the blood!’

‘It’s all right, miss. It’s stopped, now.’ Alice whisked away the offending bowl and towel. ‘You hit you head – knocked yourself out, and the doctor had you brought here – in the police van.’

‘That poor woman,’ Julia fretted. ‘They’d no right … Was there any trouble?’

‘No trouble. I think Miss – er –’

‘Sutton,’ Julia supplied.

‘I think, Miss Sutton, that there was fault on both sides, so there’ll be nothing further said about it – this time.’

‘And the girl who threw the cricket ball?’

‘She scarpered, miss,’ Alice breathed. ‘Well, with the doctor wanting their carriage for you, there was nothing to cart her off in.’

‘Good. I’m glad she knocked his helmet off.’

‘Madam! You are completely without shame – but at least you appear to be recovering.’

‘Shame? Yes, I suppose I am.’ There was a silence as Julia looked, as if for the first time, into the face of her deliverer. Then, grasping the chair arms firmly, she rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I am grateful to you, doctor, though I’m still not sure what happened.’

‘Nor I, Miss Sutton, though from a distance you appeared to take a flying leap at a policeman. Luckily I was there, though your injuries appear worse than they really are. The abrasion to your forehead, though slight, bled rather a lot, and you will have quite a bruise in the morning. I can well believe that your head aches, too.’

‘Aches!’ Alice whispered. ‘She went down with such a bang I’m surprised it’s still in one piece!’

‘Well, I think she’ll be all right now, with your help, Miss –’ He smiled.

‘Hawthorn, sir. I’m Miss Julia’s maid, and I’ll see to her.’

‘And you’ll call a doctor at once, should Miss Sutton develop a sudden feeling of sickness or coldness or clamminess of the skin. Is there a telephone in the house?’

‘There is, sir. But she will be all right?’

‘I’m almost certain she will. And take a powder if the headache prevents you from sleeping, ma’am.’

‘But where will we find you, if –’ Julia stammered.

‘I’m afraid I’m not on call, Miss Sutton. I’m not in general practice. I work at Bart’s. But your local doctor, perhaps …’

‘I’ve been a terrible trouble, haven’t I?’ Julia whispered contritely. ‘How can I thank you?’

‘By thinking no more about it. I’m only glad I was there in the park to – to get you out of trouble.’

Gravely, he made a small, polite bow; smiling, he left her.

‘Do you think he’s married?’ Julia demanded when Alice had handed him his hat and gloves and bobbed a curtsey before closing the front door behind him.

‘Married, miss? The doctor? Whatever put such a thought into your head?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I think it must be the bump to my forehead. And I don’t know why I’m making such a fuss, because I won’t ever see him again, will I? He didn’t even tell me his name.’

‘No, miss, he didn’t.’

‘Just my luck to meet someone like him, then find he isn’t interested,’ Julia whispered soberly.

‘Well, miss, the way I see it is this. Tonight you were his patient, so it wouldn’t have been proper for him to be interested, would it? And he didn’t need to tell you his name, because he gave me his card – just in case, he said – before he left. And if you’d like to know it says his name is Andrew MacMalcolm, and if you want my opinion I’d say definitely that he isn’t married.’

‘Isn’t?’

‘Not a chance. Married men have all their shirt buttons. Doctor MacMalcolm had two of his missing.’

‘He did?’ A smile lifted the corners of Julia’s mouth and a distinct sparkle lit her eyes.

‘Oh, yes. A sewing-maid always notices such things.’

‘Hawthorn! What a dear, clever person you are. Do you know, I’m really glad you came to London with me. It wouldn’t have been half as much fun with Mary or Bess. And I think I’ll go to bed now. It’s been a funny sort of day, hasn’t it, and all at once I’m a little tired. Be a dear, and untie my corset laces? I can manage on my own, if you’ll do that for me.’

All at once, Julia wanted to lie quietly in her bed and think about the young doctor and the height of him and the broadness of his shoulders – and those grey, thicklashed eyes – or were they green? – that laughed, even when he was scolding her.

‘I’ll do that,’ Alice smiled, ‘and when you’re settled down I’ll bring you up a drink of milk. And you won’t be cross with me in the morning, will you, when you find you’ve got a terrible ugly bruise?’

‘Of course not. Why should I be?’

‘Because it was my fault, really. All of a sudden I didn’t see why I shouldn’t join in too, and I gave that big policeman such a shove from behind, though if I’d known he’d land slap-bang on top of you I’d never have done it. I wouldn’t – honestly.’

‘Why, Hawthorn – and you pretending to be such a sober-sides! And I’m not the least bit cross with you.’

‘You’re not?’

‘Honestly. I’d even go so far as to say,’ Julia smiled, ‘that I wouldn’t have missed tonight for anything.’

Nor missed meeting Andrew MacMalcolm and gazing, bewildered, into those wonderful green – or were they grey? – eyes. And wanting, very much, to meet him again.

3

Clementina Sutton’s heels tapped angrily across the floor. She had had enough, more than enough. This time Elliot had gone too far! She pulled on the bell handle, then pulled again. She was hurt and humiliated and near to tears. Debasing, it had been, and to hear it in such a way had been nothing less than mortifying.

How often, in the hope of an invitation, had she left her card at the home of Mrs Mounteagle; how many times had she been ignored – snubbed – and by a lady related by blood or marriage to half the gentry in the Riding. Yet this morning Mrs Mounteagle had finally acknowledged the existence of the mistress of Pendenys Place and had called, actually called, to a joyful reception.

Yet why had she come? Only to put her down; to humiliate Clementina Sutton. Not only to thrust in the knife of humiliation, but to turn it excruciatingly; to let it be known that Elliot was the subject of gossip of the worst possible kind and that his mother need only visit Creesby to learn the cause of it.

Then Mrs Mounteagle had risen to her feet and left at once. The coveted visit was over in less than four minutes and the lady had indicated, with the absence of even the slightest departing nod from her carriage window, that Clementina Sutton could never again expect to receive another call.

But this was the last time, the very last time she would brush Elliot’s affairs under the carpet. She would not be cheapened; not in Holdenby nor Creesby, nor anywhere! She began to pace the floor, eyes on the door, ears straining for the irritatingly unhurried step in the slateflagged corridor outside.

Below stairs, in the long, draughty passage where the bellboy spent his days sitting on a stool, the third bell in a row of twenty began its ringing and he was on his feet in an instant, hurrying to the kitchen.

‘Three,’ he called. ‘Number three!’ and the under-housemaid sighed, then ran to fetch the butler who had just taken his newspaper to his sitting-room and would bite her head off when she told him the breakfast-room bell was ringing.

It wasn’t as if, Clementina reasoned to her reflection in the wall mirror, there was any need for this kind of thing. Not hereabouts, anyway. Granted, young gentlemen always took their pleasures, and her own son was no exception. But not on their own doorstones; not where they were known. Elliot was a fool! Women in London were eager and willing, yet her son chose to pleasure himself not five miles away with the daughter of a butcher!

Her hand hovered over the bell handle, then fell to her side. He was coming, his tread measured, and he would open the door sedately, turn slowly to close it behind him with annoying quietness, then look down his nose and say, as he was saying now, ‘Mrs Sutton?’

‘What kept you?’ she hissed.

‘Madam?’ Didn’t she know a butler walked slowly; must never, ever, lose the dignity that years of butling for the quality – the quality, mark you – had bred into him, the dignity that rich Americans would pay good wages for, were he to put himself on offer.

‘Fetch me Mr Elliot!’

‘I will try to find –’

‘Now. This instant!’

He closed the door behind him, walking disdainfully, slowly, across the great hall – eighteen measured steps, it always took – to the door of the smoking-room, there to shatter the self-satisfaction of the young buck who would be filling it with the stink of Turkish tobacco.

She’d heard, then, about the butcher’s daughter? Did she, he wondered with distinct pleasure, know that the talk had reached Holdenby, too? My, but he’d like to be a fly on the breakfast-room ceiling, though they’d hear, like as not. Mrs Sutton in a fury could be heard the length of the house. Pausing briefly to remove all traces of smugness from his face, he drew a deep breath then opened the double doors with the aplomb of long practice.

‘Mrs Sutton asks that you join her in the breakfast-room,’ he murmured.

‘Oh, God.’ Elliot Sutton removed a leg from the chair arm. ‘What does she want now?’

‘The mistress did not tell me.’ But if I were you, laddie, I’d shift myself. He opened the doors wider, inclining his head as the young man slouched through them. And I wouldn’t be in your shoes for all the port in the cellar. Oh my word no – not if they threw in the Madeira, too!

‘Well?’ demanded Clementina of her son.

‘Well what?’

‘You know damn well, and don’t light a cigarette in here,’ she warned as his hand strayed to his inside breastpocket. ‘Creesby, that’s what. And stand up. I didn’t give you permission to sit!’