A Bloom in Winter (13 page)

“A
re you ready yet?”

Victoria resisted a childish urge to stick her tongue out. Something about Lottie just grated on her nerves.

She checked her hair again in the looking glass. She was wearing the same suit she had worn to her disastrous interview with Hairy Herbert. She wanted Martha to take her seriously and resolved to be sober and solemn when they met again.

“I’m ready,” she said, giving her reflection a stern nod.

After Victoria had slipped into her dark coat, she and Lottie hopped aboard the Tube to the east side of London.

The scent of raw sewage and garbage assaulted her nose when she stepped out of the station. Children hunched in the wide doorways of dilapidated brick buildings. They watched her pass with huge eyes in starving faces, their feet covered in cloth or newspapers. Down one alleyway, she spotted rats fighting over the body of a dead cat next to a stinking pile of refuse. Overly rouged women with babies in their arms slipped furtively past as they peddled their daytime wares of rags or soap and waited for the sun to set.

This wasn’t just a different part of town; it was an entirely
new world for Victoria, who had spent most of her life in the protected oases of Mayfair, Belgravia, and St. James, though she didn’t tell Lottie that. There was something smug about Lottie that made Victoria contrary, so she was careful not to show her shock at the filth and poverty that surrounded them almost the moment they emerged from the Tube.

Victoria pressed her lips together and followed Lottie, who kept watching her out of the corner of one eye. She felt judged for her title, her background, and most of all her naïveté. But maybe she should be judged. How could she have so much when these people had nothing?

Sobs gathered in her throat, making it hard to breathe, and finally she made a motion to Lottie to slow down.

Lottie turned toward her, her brows knit together. “This isn’t a safe place to loiter,” she said, but then she took a look at Victoria and her face softened. “I cried for hours the first time I came here,” she said quietly

“I’m not crying,” Victoria gasped out, only to discover that she was. Lottie waited for her to wipe her eyes. Victoria finally said, “I can’t walk very fast without triggering an attack.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Lottie asked, exasperated. “My little cousin has asthma.” Victoria winced at the word. “Do you have your nebulizer with you?” Lottie asked.

Victoria held up the large reticule she carried. She was learning. As much as she didn’t want to admit she had a problem, her last attack at Nanny Iris’s had scared her.

“Well, that’s something,” Lottie went on. “Anna forgets hers all the time. We’ll try to get a ride back to the Tube on the way home.”

Victoria felt herself warming to the woman a bit. “So why is the headquarters all the way out here?” she asked.

“No money,” Lottie said shortly. “We use our money to fight tyranny.”

“How?”

“However we can.” Lottie turned to open the door of a stone building that might have once been a barn.

Victoria firmed her chin and followed Lottie up the narrow stairs. The smell of horses permeating the stairwell confirmed its not-so-long-ago use as a barn, but as the scent was so much nicer than the garbage and decay out on the street, Victoria didn’t mind.

There was another door at the top of the staircase and Lottie rapped three times before unlocking it.

“Why all the secrecy?” Victoria asked, and Lottie rolled her eyes. Victoria resolved to hold her tongue.

The room spanned the entire upper floor of the building and had two windows in the front, one on the side, and two in the back. Whether much light came through them was hard to say, because all had the shutters locked tight. There was a large machine on one side of the building and a large rack of what looked like iron tools.

A small, completely inadequate stove sat in one corner of the room with several desks clustered around it, cutting off heat to the rest of the room. Three women were gathered around one desk, reading something, when Lottie and Victoria walked in. Martha broke away from the group and greeted Lottie and Victoria with warm hugs.

“What’s the latest catastrophe?” Lottie asked.

“We only have about three more hours of coal left for the stove. The police are throwing Salma out of jail and telling her to go get a good meal, our rent is due, and our coffers are empty.”

“Just the usual, eh?” Lottie smiled.

“Thank you so much for coming to our humble headquarters,” Martha said to Victoria. “That machine over there is called Gerta and she is both my pride and joy and the bane of my existence.”

“She’s always breaking down,” Lottie explained.

“What is it?” Victoria asked.

“Our printing press,” Martha said, waving a hand. “Come, I’ll show you.”

Martha explained the press, the newspaper, and their work. Her face grew animated as she spoke and her lilting voice filled with fire as she recounted stories of injustice.

Listening, Victoria remembered the humiliation she felt at the hands of Mr. Herbert, and how ostracized she felt solely due to her sex. Her chest tightened as reality dawned.

She would never be a botanist if women weren’t ever taken seriously, and they would never be taken seriously unless they could participate fully in the political process.

“I’d love to help out,” she burst out earnestly. “In any way that I can.”

Martha’s dark eyes lit up, “I’ve never believed in divine intervention, but for the first time, I think we just got an answer to our prayers.”

Victoria laughed. “I’ve been called many things in my life, but never an answer to prayers.”

Martha led her to a quiet corner away from the others. “I have a great many workers and I have many workers who are great, but for quite some time now, I have noticed the need for someone who could grasp the whole picture. Someone who could be my second.” She laid a finger over her lips while her
dark eyes considered Victoria. Victoria straightened, knowing she was being judged. Then, after a moment, Martha nodded as if she’d made a decision. “If you will excuse me for a moment.”

Martha went over to Lottie and had a quiet conference with her. Lottie stared at Victoria several times and shook her head. Then she finally shrugged.

Martha turned and addressed the others. “Victoria and I are going out to dinner. Lottie, I will make sure Victoria gets home safely. The rest of you work until the coal runs out and then call it a day. I’m sure something will turn up in the morning. It always does.”

Victoria waved at Lottie, who ignored her, perhaps sulky at being left behind. Victoria didn’t care. She found Martha fascinating, and Victoria couldn’t believe that a woman like this was impressed by
her
.

Martha drove as if rushing to a fire, expertly dodging pedestrians, horses, and other cars. Instead of arriving at a restaurant, she parked the car near a shabby tea shop, ignoring a man with a pushcart who screamed at her for parking in front of his cart. “This place has wonderful meat pies that will sustain you all day. I always come here when money is tight,” Martha said with a smile.

The two ladies were seated and a pot of tea put between them. Martha ordered steak and kidney pies.

She lit a cigarette and smiled. “I brought you here to learn about you. This is a job interview of sorts, you know.”

Victoria straightened. “No, I didn’t know exactly, though I suspected it, but isn’t it as important that I want to work for you as it is that you want me to work for you?”

Martha blinked and then laughed. “I hope you write more eloquently than you speak.”

“You understood me perfectly well.” Victoria laughed. “Why don’t I answer a question about myself and you answer a question about yourself?”

Martha looked amused. “Oh, that’s right. You like things to be fair. I’ll start. Why are you even interested in helping our Suffragettes for Female Equality? You could be working with the Women’s Social and Political Union or the NUWSS. Those organizations are far larger than ours are.”

“And why is that?” Victoria wanted to know.

Martha shook her head. “No, you first.”

Victoria thought about it for a moment. She had a feeling the question carried a great deal of weight, and she truly wanted Martha to like her. “All my life I have been not only pampered but coddled because of my illness. No one thought I was capable of anything and they always underestimated me, even my father, who adored me. I took a secretarial course to prepare myself for whatever I would end up doing, though I always thought it would have something to do with botany. But I see now that, at this moment in time, this is more important. Not only should women have the ability to vote, but there should be laws that make what happened to me impossible. Someone shouldn’t be able to deny me employment for something I am qualified for simply because I am a woman. We may never get there, but I’m realizing I want to work with an organization that at least feels it’s possible. And one that doesn’t stop with the right to vote.”

There was more that Victoria wanted to say, but she could see in Martha’s expression that she didn’t need to go on.

Martha gave her a wide smile and again Victoria was struck by how pretty she was. “I think that is a fine answer. Now let me tell you a bit more about us, and you can decide whether you want to join us or not. We walk a fine line between legal and
illegal. Some of the women who have gone on hunger strikes belong to my organization. Even though I don’t necessarily agree with that tactic, I admire their tenacity and commitment. I don’t agree with anything that puts a woman in harm’s way, though my partner in crime believes that there are things worth dying for.”

“Partner in crime?” Victoria asked, curious.

“Oh, yes. Didn’t Lottie tell you that she and I are joint publishers?” She paused. “Where was I? Oh, hunger strikes. We don’t do that, but we do help women escape men who are beating them if we can, and that takes quite a bit of our resources, not to mention that it’s quite dangerous. The law doesn’t side with us at all and oftentimes we have to sneak them out in the dead of night. I know that is a bit of a stretch for a women’s rights organization, but Lottie believes that unless we save women from brutality and educate them, the vote isn’t worth much.”

The meat pies arrived and Victoria cut into the flaky crust, freeing the fragrant gravy trapped inside. Tender pieces of steak and vegetables spilled out, and both women tucked into the food as if they had been starving for days. For several minutes they said nothing until Victoria took a sip of her tea. “Does that weaken the organization, though? It seems to be spread rather thinly. Don’t the most successful organizations focus their efforts?”

Martha grimaced. “I suppose, but it’s difficult to stop helping when you see a need.”

Victoria leaned forward, excited. “So do you have a list of other organizations that help with specific needs that you can’t fulfill? For instance, food charities, nurseries that mind young
children while their mothers work, or organizations that help women who are being beaten? There must be some.”

“There are, but most have less funding than we do,” Martha said.

“It seems like you need someone who can connect women with the organization that would best help them. That way we could focus our efforts a bit more.”

“That’s brilliant!” Martha exclaimed, and Victoria warmed under her praise. “The first thing I want you to do is to create a master list of all the organizations that help women, what they do, and what their weaknesses and strengths are. That way we’re not wasting time emulating the work of other charity organizations and we can move our focus back to furthering women’s right to vote and education.”

A flush of excitement rushed over Victoria. “I’ll start it first thing tomorrow, right after I buy coal and pay rent on the building a month or two.”

Martha lit a cigarette and tilted her head. “The Suffragettes for Female Equality and the Women’s Equality League will gladly accept your gift of a week’s worth of coal and one month’s rent, but no more than that.” Martha raised a hand at Victoria’s protests. “You think I don’t have more money than I give to the organization? I will not allow anyone to impoverish herself for a cause. Lottie doesn’t agree with me on that point, but what good would it do to have one more impoverished woman on the street? Money, my dear girl, is the great equalizer. It is one of the only things that will protect a woman when times get rough. So while I give the organization a monthly stipend, I refuse to give it everything. You would be surprised at how quickly money gets eaten up. Men wouldn’t impoverish themselves for a cause;
why should women? Because we are more compassionate?” Martha shook her head, causing a riot among the curls dangling around her face. She’d obviously had this argument before. “Besides, you’re only eighteen. Who has control of your money?”

Victoria looked down at the tablecloth. “My uncle actually takes care of all of my expenses, but he’s never objected or even questioned any of the bills sent to him.”

Martha lit another cigarette and curled a lip. “You’d be surprised just how quickly he’d throw a fit at your giving money to the Suffragettes for Female Equality. If I were you, I would go to the bank myself and withdraw cash. That way it isn’t linked to us at all. If he questions you about it, you can always say it was for underthings. That always shuts them up.”

Victoria giggled. “Is that what you do?”

A shadow fell over Martha’s face. “I’m much older than eighteen and I no longer have any family to watch over me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Victoria said with a pang of sympathy. “I know . . . ”

Martha’s mouth turned down and she put out her cigarette with an aggressive jab. “That’s not what I meant. There’s just no one in my family who cares what I do.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say to that.

Martha waved away Victoria’s attempt to pay the bill. “Don’t fret. I have plenty of people who love me and I have my work with the Suffragettes for Female Equality and the Women’s Equality League.”

Something struck Victoria and she frowned. “Why does your organization have two names?”