“I’m sorry. It’s… my courses have begun and I don’t know what to do.”
“What?”
I repeated myself and turned red again.
“Oh, Lord, the curse,” Jenny muttered. She looked me up and down. “Blimey, Miss Maude, twelve’s young to start-you’ve not got even a trace of bubbies yet!”
“I’m not so young,” I cried. “I’ll be thirteen in-in eight months.” I knew how silly I sounded and began to cry.
Jenny opened her door wide. “There, now, no need for that.” She put her arm around me. “You’d best come in-it won’t get sorted out with you standing there bawling.”
Jenny’s room had been Nanny’s room when I was small. Although I had been in it only once or twice since Jenny moved into it, it still felt familiar. It smelled of warm skin and wool blankets and camphorated oil, like the presses Nanny used to heat for my chest when I had a cold. Jenny’s dress, apron, and cap were hung on pegs. Her hairbrush sat on the small mantel over the fire, and also a photograph of Jenny with a baby in her lap. They were sitting in front of a backdrop of palm fronds, and Jenny wore her best dress. Both looked serious and surprised, as if they had not expected the camera to flash.
“Who’s that?” I asked. I had never seen the photograph.
Jenny was wrapping a robe around herself and barely looked up. “My nephew.”
“I’ve not heard you mention him. What’s his name?”
“Jack.” Jenny crossed her arms. “Now, has your mum told you anything, or sorted out anything for you?”
I shook my head.
“Of course not. I might’ve known. Your mother’s so busy saving women she don’t even look after her own.”
“I know what’s happening. I’ve read about it in books.”
“But you don’t know what to do, do you? That’s what’s important, what you do about it. Who cares what it is? ‘Deeds not words,’ ain’t that what your mum’s always saying?”
I frowned.
Jenny pursed her lips. “Sorry, Miss Maude,” she said. “All right-I’ll lend you some of mine till we’ve got you what you need.” She knelt by a small chest where she kept her things and took out a few long thick pieces of cloth and a curious belt I had never seen. She showed me how to fold the cloth in three and fasten it to the belt. She explained about the bucket and salt water to soak the cloths in, to be left under the bed by the chamberpot. Then she went downstairs for a bucket and a hot-water bottle for the pain, while I washed myself and tried on the towel and belt in my room. It felt like my petticoats and bloomers had become all wadded up and caught between my legs, making me waddle like a duck. I was sure everyone would be able to tell.
As awful as it had been having such a thing happen when I was with Daddy, I was glad at least that Lavinia was not there too. She would never forgive me for starting first. She has always been the pretty one, the womanly one-even when we were younger she reminded me of the women in pre-Raphaelite paintings, with her curly hair and plump figure. Jenny was right-I am flat, and as Grandmother once said, my clothes hang from me like washing from a line. Lavinia and I always assumed that she would get her courses first, would wear a corset first, would marry first, would have children first. Sometimes I’ve been bothered by this, but often I’ve been secretly relieved. I have never told her, but I am not so sure that I want to be married and have children.
Now I would have to hide my belts and towels and pain from her. I didn’t like keeping secrets from my best friend. But then, she was keeping one from me. Ever since Mummy took up with Caroline Black, Lavinia has been peculiar about her, but won’t say why. When I ask her she simply says that suffragettes are wicked, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that. It was something to do with Simon and being down that grave. But she won’t say, and neither will Simon. I went to the cemetery on my own and asked him, but he just shrugged and kept on digging.
When Jenny came back with the bucket she gave me a hug. “You’re a woman now, you know. Before you know it you’ll be wearing a corset. That’s something to tell your mum tomorrow.”
I nodded. But I knew that tomorrow I would say nothing to Mummy. She wasn’t here now when she was needed most. Tomorrow did not matter.
FEBRUARY 1908
Kitty Coleman
To my surprise, it was harder facing Maude than Richard.
Richard’s response was predictable-a rage he contained in front of the police but unleashed in the cab home. He shouted about the family name, about the disgrace to his mother, about the uselessness of the cause. All of this I had known to expect, from hearing of the reactions of other women’s husbands. Indeed, I have been lucky to go this long without Richard complaining. He has thought my activities with the WSPU a harmless hobby, to be dabbled in between tea parties. It is only now he truly understands that I, too, am a suffragette.
One thing he said in the cab did surprise me. “What about your daughter?” he shouted. “Now that she’s firmly on the road to womanhood, she needs a better example than you are setting.”
I frowned-the phrase he used was so awkward it must be masking something. “What do you mean?”
Richard stared at me, both incredulous and embarrassed. “She hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what?”
“That she’s begun her-her…” He waved his hand vaguely at my skirt.
“She has?” I cried. “When?”
“Months ago.”
“How can you know when I don’t?”
“I was with her at the time, that’s why! And a humiliating moment it was, for both of us. She had to go to Jenny in the end-you weren’t home. I should have guessed then how deeply you were into this ridiculous nonsense.”
Richard could have said more, but must have sensed he didn’t need to. I was remembering when my own courses began-how I had run to my mother, crying, and how she had comforted me.
We were silent the rest of the way back. When we got home I took a candle from the hall table and went directly up to Maude’s room. I sat on her bed and looked at her in the dim light, wondering what other secrets she was keeping from me, and how to tell her what I must tell her.
She opened her eyes and sat up before I had said anything. “What is it, Mummy?” she asked so clearly that I am not sure she had been asleep.
It was best to be honest and direct. “Do you know where I was today while you were at school?”
“At the WSPU headquarters?”
“I was at Caxton Hall for the Women’s Parliament. But then I went to Parliament Square with some others to try to get into the House of Commons.”
“And… did you?”
“No. I was arrested. I’ve just come back from Cannon Row Police Station with your father. Who is furious, of course.”
“But why were you arrested? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. We were simply pushing through the crowd when policemen grabbed us and threw us to the ground. When we got up, they threw us down again and again. The bruises on my shoulders and ribs are quite spectacular. We’ve all got them.”
I did not add that many of those bruises came from the ride in the Black Maria-how the driver took corners so sharply I was thrown about, or how the cubicles in the van were so small that I felt I had been shut in a coffin standing up, or how it smelled of urine, which I was sure the police had done themselves to punish us further.
“Was Caroline Black arrested too?” Maude asked.
“No. She had fallen back to speak to someone she knew, and by the time she caught up the police had already got us. She was terribly upset not to be taken. She even came down to Cannon Row on her own and sat with us.”
Maude was silent. I wanted to ask her about what Richard had told me in the cab ride home, but found I couldn’t. It was easier to talk about what had happened to me.
“I’ll be in court early tomorrow,” I continued. “They may send me straight to Holloway. I wanted to say good-bye now.”