Then I heard a bang that was not muffled. I looked into the crowd, suddenly able to see, and there was someone who looked like my late brother on the pavement opposite me. He was staring at Caroline with such a perplexed expression that I couldn’t help but step across to see what he was looking at.
There was another bang. Just before the horse reared I saw Caroline’s banner-it read WORDS NOT DEEDS.
Blast, I thought, who made such a silly mistake? Then the hoof came down on my chest.
Lavinia Waterhouse
At first I would not speak to Maude when she and Simon came back-not all the way down Portland Place or Upper Regent Street, nor when we were stopped for a time along Oxford Street. I could not forgive her for leaving me like that.
She did not speak, either, just marched with a face like thunder, and did not seem to notice that I had sent her to Coventry. There is nothing more annoying than someone not realizing you are punishing them. Indeed it rather felt as if it were me being punished-I was immensely curious about Maude’s mother and the horse but since I was not speaking to her I could not ask about it. I wished Ivy May would talk to me, to make my silence with Maude all the more pointed. I straightened her hat for her, as it was tilted dangerously far back, but Ivy May simply nodded at me in thanks. She was not in the habit of saying things when one wanted her to.
Then the procession halted again. Simon ran off to collect his horse, and we moved toward the Marble Arch entrance to Hyde Park. We were pressed closer and closer together, as many of the people on the pavement squeezed into the crowd to enter as well. It was like being a grain of sand in an hourglass, waiting our turn to funnel through the tiny hole. It grew so crowded that I grabbed Maude and Ivy May’s hands.
Then we were through, and suddenly there was open space, sunny and green and full of fresh air. I gulped at it as if it were water.
A great sea of people had gathered in the distance around various carts where handfuls of suffragettes perched. In their white dresses and all piled up above the crowd they reminded me of puffy clouds on the horizon.
“Move along, move along,” called a woman behind us who wore a sash reading CHIEF MARSHAL. “There’s thousands more behind you, waiting to get in. Move along to the platforms, please, keeping in formation.”
The procession was meant to continue all the way to the platforms, but once inside the park everyone began rushing to and fro, and we lost all order. Men who had been spectators along the route were now mingling with all the ladies who had marched, and as we moved willy-nilly toward the platforms it became more crowded again, with them pushing in on us. Mama would be horrified if she could see us, unchaperoned, caught among all these men. I saw that silly Eunice for a moment, shouting at someone to bring her banner around. She was hopeless at looking after us.
There were banners everywhere. I kept looking for one I had sewn but there were so many that my mistakes were lost among them. I had not imagined that so many people could gather in one place at one time. It was frightening but thrilling as well, like when a tiger at the zoo stares straight at you with its yellow eyes.
“Do you see Platform Five?” Maude asked.
I couldn’t see numbers anywhere, but Ivy May pointed to a platform, and we began to make our way over. Maude kept pulling me into walls of people, and I had to grip Ivy May’s hand harder, as it was growing sweaty.
“Let’s not go any farther,” I called to Maude. “It’s so crowded.”
“Just a little bit-I’m looking for Mummy.” Maude kept pulling my hand.
Suddenly there were too many people. The little spaces we had managed to push into became a solid wall of legs and backs. People pressed up behind us, and I could feel strangers pushing at my arms and shoulders.
Then I felt a hand on my bottom, the fingers brushing me gently. I was so surprised that I did nothing for a moment. The hand pulled up my dress and began fumbling with my bloomers, right there in the middle of all those people. I couldn’t believe no one noticed.
When I tried to shift away, the hand Followed. I looked back-the man standing behind me was about Papa’s age, tall, gray haired, with a thin moustache and spectacles. His eyes were fixed on the platform. I could not believe it was his hand-he looked so respectable. I raised my heel and brought it down hard on the foot behind me. The man winced and the hand disappeared. After a moment he pushed away and was gone, someone else stepping into his place.
I shuddered and whispered to Maude, “Let’s get away from here,” but I was drowned out by a bugle call. The crowd surged forward and Maude was pushed into the back of the woman ahead of her, dropping my hand. Then I was shoved violently to the left. I looked around but couldn’t see Maude.
“If I may have your attention, I would like to open this meeting on this most momentous occasion in Hyde Park,” I heard a voice ring out. A woman had climbed onto a box higher than the rest of the women on the platform. In her mauve dress she looked like lavender sprinkled on a bowl of vanilla ice cream. She stood very straight and still.
“There’s Mrs. Pankhurst,” women around me murmured.
“I am delighted to see before me a great multitude of people, of supporters-both women and men-of the simple right of women to take their places alongside men and cast their ballots. Prime Minister Asquith has said that he needs to be assured that the will of the people is behind the call for votes for women. Well, Mr. Asquith, I say to you that if you were standing where I am now and saw the great sea of humanity before you as I do, you would need no more convincing!”
The crowd roared. I put my hands on the shoulders of the woman beside me and jumped up to try and see over the crowd. “Maude!” I called, but it was so noisy she would never have heard me. The woman scowled and shrugged off my hands.
Mrs. Pankhurst was waiting for the sound to die down. “We have a full afternoon of speakers,” she began as it grew quiet, “and without further ado-”
“Maude!” I cried.
Mrs. Pankhurst paused, and jerked her head slightly. “I would like to introduce-”
“Maude! Maude!”
“Lavinia!” I heard, and saw a hand fluttering above the crowd far to my right. I waved back and kept waving as I began to push toward the hand.
Mrs. Pankhurst had stopped again. “Shh! Shh!” women on the platform began to hiss. I continued to push, forcing spaces to open in front of me, ignoring whatever was happening on the platform. Then ahead of me I saw the garland of delphiniums and star jasmine I had woven that morning for Maude’s straw hat, and with one last shove I had found her.
We held on to each other tightly. Maude’s heart was beating hard, and I was trembling.
“Let’s get away from all these people,” Maude whispered. I nodded and, still holding tight to Maude, let her push away from the platform and out of the jam of people listening to Mrs. Pankhurst.
At last there was space again. When we reached the trees on the far edge of the crowd I stopped. “I’m going to be sick,” I said.
Maude led me to a tree, where I could kneel away from everyone. Afterward we found a shady spot to sit a little away from the base of the tree. We didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but watched people stroll or hurry past, detaching themselves from one wheel of spectators around a platform, joining another. We could see four platforms from where we sat. In the distance the women speaking on them were tiny figures whose arms moved about like windmills.
I was very thirsty.
Maude would speak eventually, I knew, and ask the question that must be asked. I dreaded it.
“Lavinia,” she said at last, “where is Ivy May?”