The Hourglass Factory (21 page)

Frankie stopped scribbling. ‘What are the government doing all this time?’

Major Barclay-Evans raised an eyebrow. ‘Standing firm. Asquith didn’t come to power until a couple of years ago, but the party have always toed the same line. Do you know, he says he
will resign if women are given votes?’

Mrs Barclay-Evans put her spoon down. ‘So on we went, meetings, rallies. I remember once the crowd threw live mice at Christabel. We’d march in deputations to Parliament, rush to the
lobby. We’d get arrested for this, of course. That was the point.’

‘Arrested for lobbying Parliament.’ Twinkle raised an eyebrow. ‘And to think, it’s not that difficult really to get close to a politician.’ The corners of her mouth
curled into a smile. Frankie shot her a look. Mrs Barclay-Evans shifted stiffly and Frankie wondered again what had brought them to know one another.

‘So, the first split,’ Frankie scuffed the nib of the pen against her pad.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Barclay-Evans blinked, aware she was dawdling. ‘Bills were being raised by the government and talked out. We were busy chaining ourselves to the ladies’
gallery, hiding in cupboards, getting arrested. But then in the middle of this came the suggestion that we should have a conference. Vote for a new committee. Well, Christabel and her mother, Mrs
Pankhurst, will tell you that they didn’t like this idea because they didn’t want to waste time canvassing for votes from their peers when they could be fighting the cause. But whether
you believe them or just think they wanted to keep control over the movement,’ she shrugged, ‘they set up as autocrats. And at the time, I really think the majority of us believed that
was the best solution. But a group of women objected and broke away to form the Women’s Freedom League, that’s Teresa Billington-Grieg’s organisation by the way, they are
non-violent militants.’

‘Are these the suffragists?’ Milly asked.

Frankie shook her head. ‘They’re all suffragists. It just means campaigning for a vote. But back a bit, are they autocrats, the Pankhursts, do they essentially control the
suffragettes, undemocratically?’

‘Yes.’

Milly cut in. ‘Isn’t the problem here,’ she asked pushing aside her finished teacup, ‘that there are so many factions fighting for the same end that they end up
squabbling with each other?’

Mrs Barclay-Evans looked at them in turn. ‘You could say that. You could also say that different people have different ideas on what they are willing to do to make themselves heard. Should
they have to fight in a way they don’t believe is ethical, or not fight the cause at all? There should be a method of protest and an organisation for everyone.’

Frankie gestured with her pen for her to go on.

‘Well, what next?’ She removed a strand of hair from her crinkled face and tucked it behind her ear. ‘Hunger striking, that was next. Mrs Wallace Dunlop rushed parliament one
day, made it through the police lines and managed to stencil on the walls of the lobby, “It is the right of the subject to petition the king and all prosecutions for such petitioning are
illegal”.’

‘Might I guess,’ said Twinkle, ‘that she was put in prison for it?’

‘Second division.’

‘Where the proper criminals are kept.’ Frankie remembered sitting in on trials for the
Tottenham Evening News
. You could wait all day for something juicy to come along, if it
ever did, meanwhile line after line of sad drunk women were tossed into second division for pickpocketing, begging or soliciting.

‘So she went on hunger strike to protest,’ Mrs Barclay-Evans said. ‘Not so much about being sent to prison but about being given second division. After the others followed
suit, the force-feeding began. It was about this time Constance Lytton decided to make a stand about the way privileged women were being treated compared to the working classes.’

Frankie looked up sharply. ‘Why do I know that name? What did she do?’

Mrs Barclay-Evans took a large breath. ‘She’s a suffragette, an aristocrat by birth, with I believe, a somewhat frail constitution, as every Lady should have.’

Frankie noticed Milly wince.

‘When she was imprisoned first time round the doctors checked her heart and decided she was too weak to be force-fed. So she was discharged. She was indignant about this but the Home
Secretary insisted it was medical practice, there had been no favourable treatment given. Lady Constance was not convinced. She believed the government were letting poor women waste away in prison
and keeping the wealthy ones safe for the sake of the headlines. So she travelled to Newcastle, cut off her hair and forged herself some fake documents under the name of Jane Warton, Jane for Joan
of Arc, Warton, I believe, was a corruption of an old family name, and she posed as a seamstress.’

‘She was arrested for vandalism,’ the Major interrupted.

‘You can be arrested with a false name?’ Frankie tilted her head. ‘Didn’t they cotton on to who she was when they had her lined up?’

‘My dear, you can tell them anything you want. You could say you were me, or your friend here, or the daughter of a beggar from France. The police of this country may think they are
sophisticated, but compared to the continent their methods for logging prisoners haven’t advanced since the Domesday Book.’

Frankie sat back.

‘And so this time when the doctors came to do the feeding, they took a stethoscope to her chest and announced her heart was “ripping splendid”.’ Mrs Barclay-Evans’s
teacup rattled in her hand. ‘The horrors you will see in gaol are unimaginable. When you are left alone with your own thoughts and only a copy of the Bible and that dratted
Englishwoman
’
s House and Home
book that they leave in our cells, you begin to think that there is no mercy, that Christ has left the souls of these men and women who hold you
down and look at you as though you are an animal when you are sick on them. To spend the night with vomit in your hair . . .’ She had turned greenish pale and made a little inarticulate
groan, then sat her head back up fresh. ‘Silly to be so affected. There were women who went back again and again. Like your Miss Diamond.’ Her eye was drawn to the little gold carriage
clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Time’s getting on. I should tell you where we are now. I hope it’s helpful. You’ll want to write this down, I’ll try to speak
slowly.’

She sighed. ‘Ironically, the background to the new militancy started with a truce. Two years ago. It looked as if it was going to be a year for change. Lloyd George’s People’s
Budget, the promise of reducing the powers of the House of Lords. The government set up the Conciliation Committee, and it looked like we might be getting somewhere. Women came from all over the
country to march peacefully. I remember it well because we marched the same day the National Vigilance Association marched on the Lords issue and some of our lot ended up in their parade and vice
versa and—’

Milly squinted. ‘What were the NVA doing marching about the Lords? What’s it got to do with closing down theatres?’

‘Die-hard aristocrats, the lot of them,’ the Major said. ‘Ferociously scared of change. That Thorne woman, the one whose father shot himself years ago – she’d march
on the opening of a new brand of soap.’

‘Anyway,’ Mrs Barclay-Evans said, looking at her husband, ‘she’s a silly woman, always in and out of Biarritz curing spas, and they didn’t spoil our day. It could
hardly have been better, in fact. The newspapers praised us for the first time. People began to speak of the philosophy behind giving us the vote, rather than simply calling us hooligans. So many
of the MPs are behind us – Lansbury, Lloyd George, Lord Lytton – which makes it all the more infuriating that devil of a man Asquith . . .’ Her fingers scratched the knee of her
wool skirt. ‘The truce lasted until November when arguments over reducing power in the House of Lords meant Parliament had to be dissolved. Well, that’s when Black Friday happened.
November. Two years ago.’ She didn’t elaborate. Frankie could remember reading the headlines: women mauled and assaulted in alleyways, knocked sideways, left for dead. Winston
Churchill, the then Home Secretary had been blamed by the suffragettes but never brought to task for it. Frankie exchanged a glance with Milly and wondered if she should mention the two deaths and
the cocaine on Ebony’s mouth strap, or Jojo’s claim that cabinet ministers came to his shows.

Mrs Barclay-Evans looked about to go on when something caught her eye outside. Startled, she jumped out of her seat. ‘Did you see that?’

Twinkle’s head, which had been beginning to droop, sprang back up. Frankie leapt to her feet and crossed to the window. The panes gave off a chill air against her nose. The fog outside was
still thick, the streetlamps casting dirty yellow shadows onto the pavement and shrubs.

‘Lot of feral cats round here,’ the Major said.

‘Perhaps.’ His wife sounded unconvinced. ‘But it looked larger than that. More like someone on horseback.’

‘Or a bicycle?’ Frankie offered.

‘Strange to be riding around at this time of night.’ Mrs Barclay-Evans looked unnerved, but they settled back down onto their couches. Twinkle, Frankie noticed, immediately slumped
down again and looked ready to fall asleep.

‘Would anybody like me to ring for more tea?’ Mrs Barclay-Evans asked.

They all shook their heads. ‘Very well. Where was I?’ She gave her head a little shake and remembered. ‘At the start of this year the government were still promising but
dallying. It was always the next session that it would be debated. Then the one after that.’

‘Votes tomorrow, votes yesterday but never votes today,’ said the Major softly.

‘Now listen to this, if you’re looking for a reason for increased militancy.’ Mrs Barclay-Evans leant forward, hands on her knees, her eyes earnest. ‘Asquith received a
visit from a gentleman, complaining of the inadequacies of male suffrage. That not enough men had yet been granted this privilege. And do you know what he did?’

‘I can hazard a guess,’ Twinkle said drowsily.

‘Extension of the male franchise. I wish I were joking but I’m not. The very next session a Bill was drawn up. No demands, no uprising. One lone man, one crusading hero just had to
rap at the door of Downing Street.’ She looked darkly towards the cracking fire as if she could see right through the tapestry screen. ‘“Awake, for morning in the bowl of night,
has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight”.’

Milly snorted in recognition. ‘Omar Khayyam. My father gave me a copy.’

‘And mine too,’ Mrs Barclay-Evans said, returning her gaze. ‘Violence upped its force that night. Window-breaking. The stone put the stars to flight. MPs like Charles Hobhouse,
who dared to say too that not enough has been shown to demonstrate our passion for the cause, found themselves with war declared. The West End smash in April. Ebony at the Albert Hall. When Asquith
went to Dublin in June, one woman set fire to the theatre, another dropped a hatchet into his carriage. But the war we had declared, it was war on property, not a war on human life. Bandstands,
buildings. No one could be hurt, that was the rule.’

The Major had begun to pace in front of the fire. Frankie watched his stride, his footfalls vibrating through the legs of the chairs they sat on. ‘You’re a military man though.
Don’t you think that there’s no point threatening violence if you won’t see it through?’

He stopped and stared at her. The pupils of his eyes were huge in the light and seemed to travel back deep in his head. ‘There is a grave difference between war when your life is in danger
and war when it is not.’

‘So what is this arson, then?’ Milly coolly met his gaze. ‘This increased violence that the Pethick-Lawrences cannot approve?’

There was silence.

‘You mean you don’t know?’ Milly asked.

The Major shifted. ‘There was never any exact knowing at Clement’s Inn. It was only ever planning.’

‘That’s not the point, I mean the Pankhursts must have said something to upset the Pethick-Lawrences. There must have been some specific arson plan they couldn’t
approve.’ Frankie stood, slotting the fountain pen Mrs Barclay-Evans had given her between her front teeth, rattling it up and down. Mrs Barclay-Evans’s brow knotted into a disapproving
frown. Frankie was halfway to taking the pen out and wiping it down on her jacket when the black sheet of window behind her sang out a high note, and shattered.

Shards of glass spewed into the room; everyone slammed to the floor. Twinkle shrieked and clung to her hat as she flattened out prone. Frankie dived, smacking her ear off the mantelpiece. The
sound of uneven hooves rattling off stone echoed away through the window’s smashed hole.

Silence settled, along with a biting draught. The parlour door flung back and the maid came dashing through with her white hands clutched to her cap.

‘It’s all right. We’re all right.’ Mrs Barclay-Evans stood up, joining her husband who had risen to his feet and was fumbling around the fireplace. He pulled out a
tarnished antique rifle, took aim at the window, then lowered the gun and shook his head.

‘Can’t see a damn thing in the fog.’

Frankie thought of Liam and leant her head carefully through the treacherous hole to see if she could spot him. The street outside was misty and dim, the noises from the main road rumbling in
muffled waves. ‘I think we’d better leave,’ she said, keeping her voice level.

Milly was on her knees with her hand raised, grasping something about the size of a fist. She stretched her arm out. Frankie took it from her, feeling the sudden weight. It was a stone, with
flecks of glass still stuck to its surface, shining. Around it was wrapped a page of newspaper. Gradually Frankie unfolded it, tamping down the creases, until they could all see plain the
paper’s title:
The Suffragette
.

The second the front door had closed, Twinkle scraped up her hobble skirt into one hand and retrieved a hipflask of gin from where it was strapped to her thigh. She raised it
to her lips and took it hungrily like milk from a nipple.

‘Oi, save us some of that.’ Frankie reached out and grabbed the flat pewter bottle. ‘God strike me,’ she downed a burning gulp. ‘Well, that settles something at
least. We’re staying at yours tonight.’