“Promise me they won’t.”
“They won’t.”
“Promise me something else.”
“Yes, ma‘am.”
“Promise me you won’t let my mother-in-law get her claws into Maude.”
I pulled off the tunic and gasped. Her chest was one big black bruise. “Lord, what happened to you, ma‘am?”
“Promise me.”
Now I understood why she was talking like that. “Oh, ma‘am, you’re going to be just fine in a day or two. The doctor will be here soon and he’ll sort you out. Miss Black’s gone to fetch him. And Mr.-the gentleman’s gone to get your husband.” The missus tried to say something, but I wouldn’t let her-I just ran on and on, saying whatever popped into my head. “He’s down the pub just now, but it won’t take him a minute to get back. Let’s just get this nightgown on before they come, shall we? It’s ever so pretty, this one, what with the lace at the cuffs and all. Let’s just pop this over your head and pull it down. There. And your hair, that’s it. That’s better now, ain’t it?”
She lay back again, like she were too weak to fight my words. Her breathing were all wet and ragged. I couldn’t bear to hear it. “I’ll just run and light the lamps,” I said. “For the master and doctor. Won’t be a second.” I ran out before she could say anything.
Mr. Coleman came home as I was lighting the lamps in the front hallway, and then the doctor and Miss Black. They went upstairs, and then it went all quiet up there. I couldn’t help it-I had to go and listen outside the door.
The doctor had such a low voice that all I could hear was “internal bleeding.”
Then Mr. Coleman laid into Miss Black. “Why in hell didn’t you find a doctor the moment the horse kicked her?” he shouted. “You were boasting there would be a huge crowd-surely among two hundred thousand people there was a doctor!”
“You don’t understand,” Caroline Black said. “It was so crowded it was difficult to move or even speak, much less find a doctor.”
“Why didn’t you bring her home at once? If you had shown any sense whatsoever she might be all right now, with nothing more than a few bruises.”
“Don’t you think I didn’t beg her to? You clearly don’t know your wife well if you think she would have done what I asked her to. She wanted to get to Hyde Park and hear the speeches on such an historic occasion, and nothing I nor anyone else-not even you, sir-said could have dissuaded her.”
“Hyperbole!” Mr. Coleman shouted. “Even at a time like this you suffragettes resort to hyperbole. Damn your historic occasion! Did you even look at her chest after it happened? Did you even see the damage? And who on God’s green earth told Kitty to lead a horse? She’s a disaster around horses!”
“It was her idea. No one forced her. She never told me she didn’t like horses.”
“And where’s Maude?” Mr. Coleman said. “What’s happened to my daughter?”
“She‘s-she’s on her way home, I’m sure.” Caroline Black was crying now.
I didn’t stay to hear more. I went down to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Then I sat at the table and began to cry myself.
Ivy May Waterhouse
Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.
Simon Field
I never seen a dead body before. That sounds strange coming from a gravedigger. All day long I got dead bodies round me, but they’re in boxes, nailed shut tight and covered with dirt. Sometimes I’m standing on a coffin in a grave, and there’s only an inch of wood ‘tween me and the body. But I ain’t seen it. If I spent more time out of the cemetery I’d see dead bodies all the time. Funny, that. Our ma and sisters has seen hundreds, all them women and babies died in birth, or neighbors, died of hunger or the cold.
It’s strange seeing someone I know like that. If I didn’t know to be looking for her I wouldn’t recognize her. It’s not that she’s cut or crushed or anything like that. It’s just that she ain’t there. There are the legs, arms, head, all in the right places, lying down the back of a mews behind a stack of bricks. And the face is clean and smooth even, the mouth shut, her eyes a little open like she’s looking through her lashes and don’t want you to know she’s looking. But when I look at the face I just can’t see her. She ain’t a person no more, but a thing like a sack of spuds.
“Ivy May,” I call softly, squatting beside her. I say it even though I know she’s dead. Maybe I’m hoping she’ll come back if I say her name.
But she don’t. She don’t open her eyes and look at me with that look she has of knowing everything what’s happening and never saying. She don’t sit up with her legs straight out in front of her the way she likes to sit. She don’t stand solid, looking like you could never knock her down, as hard as you pushed.
The body just lays there. And I have to get it back somehow, from a mews off the Edgware Road to Dartmouth Park.
How am I going to get her all that way without someone seeing me? I wonder. Anyone sees me will think I did it.
Then I look up at the end of the mews and see a man standing there. A tall man. Can’t see much of his face ‘cept the glint of his specs in the streetlamp and a thin moustache. He’s staring at me, and when he sees me looking at him he steps back behind the building.
Could be he thinks I’ve done it and he’s off to tell someone. But I know he’s not. It’s him what done it. Our pa says men can’t leave their crimes alone-they got to come sniffing round again, like worrying a loose tooth or picking a scab.
I run out the mews to look for him, but he’s gone. I know he’ll come back again, though, and if I don’t take her now he will.
I straighten out her dress a bit, and her hair, and I buckle on one of her shoes what’d come off. When I lift her onto my back I see her straw hat’s been under her. It’s all broken, and the flowers crushed, and too much trouble to pick it up with Ivy May heavy on my back, so I leave it on the ground.
If anyone asks, I’ll say she’s my sister and fallen asleep. But I stay away from the pubs and keep to the little streets and then the parks, Regents then Primmers Hill then the bottom of the heath, and I don’t see many folk. And none ask. That time of night the people out are too drunk to notice, or else up to their own mischief and don’t want to draw attention to themselves.
All the way home I keep thinking ‘bout that hat. I wish I hadn’t left it. I don’t like leaving any part of her there. So when it’s over, when I’ve got her home, I go back, all the way through the parks and the streets. It takes no time, not without her weight on my back. But when I get to the mews and look behind the bricks the hat is already gone, flowers and all.
Maude Coleman
I waited on the wrought-iron steps that led from the French doors down into the garden. The air smelled of jasmine and mint and grass sprinkled with dew. I could hear frogs croaking in the pond at the bottom of the garden and, from the window below me, Jenny sobbing in the kitchen.
I have never been good at waiting-it always seems so wasteful, and I feel guilty, as if I should be doing something else. But I could not do anything else now-there was nothing to be done. Grandmother had arrived and was sitting in the morning room, knitting furiously, but I did not want to be busy like that. Instead I looked up at the stars, picking out the constellations-the Great Bear, the Crow, the Wolf.
The church bells close by struck midnight.
Daddy came and stood in the open French doors and lit a cigarette. I did not look at him.
“It’s a clear night,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Pity we can’t set up the telescope in the garden-we might even see Jupiter’s moons. But of course it wouldn’t be right, would it?”
I did not answer, though I’d had the same thought myself.
“I’m sorry I shouted at you when you arrived home, Maude. I was upset.”