Читать книгу The Secret Letter - Kerry Barrett - Страница 14

April 1910

I flinched as the huge metal gate clanged shut behind me. After everything that had happened, I was jumpy and nervous. Would that stay with me? I wondered. I thought it probably would. I was changed forever now.

Beside me, was my friend Minnie, looking shrunken and pale. She stumbled and I caught her arm.

‘Easy, there,’ I said.

‘Anyone coming for you?’

She shook her head.

‘Me neither. I’ll walk with you.’

We were both unsteady on our feet. Both feeling the effects of a few weeks in prison. We’d been on hunger strike and had suffered the horrors of being force-fed shortly before we were told we were being released early. But Minnie had been inside longer than me. She was feeling it more. I looked at her in concern, hoisted my bag on to my back and offered her my arm. She hung on to me in a fashion very unlike my independent friend. I thought about just how long the Holloway Road was. I wasn’t sure she would make it.

We took a few steps forward and I looked back over my shoulder at the prison behind us. It was a huge, grey stone building, squatting like a giant slug on the side of the road.

‘Where are you going?’

She shrugged. ‘Dunno. I lost my digs. You?’

‘Home,’ I said, though the word felt strange in my mouth. ‘Back to my mother.’

‘You never talk about her,’ Minnie said. ‘She a suffragette, is she?’

I laughed out loud for the first time in weeks. ‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s … disapproving.’

We shuffled along a bit further and then paused as a hansom cab drew up next to us.

‘Minnie Gantry and Esther Watkins?’ the cabbie asked, leaning out of the window. His horse stamped its foot, eager to get going.

‘Yes?’ I said, cautious. I had no money and I doubted Minnie had any either.

‘Mrs Pankhurst sent me to see you home,’ he said. ‘Jump in.’

I was still wary. ‘We have no means to pay you.’

‘All done.’

I exchanged a glance with Minnie. ‘Minnie has nowhere to go.’

‘I got an address here, from Mrs P,’ he said. ‘Are you getting in or not?’

I helped Minnie inside then followed. She slumped in the corner and I thanked our lucky stars – and Mrs Pankhurst – that the cab had shown up when it did.

I’d only been inside Holloway for a few weeks, but as soon as my cell door had clanged shut on that first awful night, I’d put pen to paper and started writing about my experiences. I’d always written letters, since I was a child. I never sent them, just wrote them – to school friends who’d wronged me or who’d helped me, to my mother when she annoyed me, to the king, to teachers I liked, to characters in the books I read. And even to my father when he died. So when I went to jail, it seemed obvious to start writing about it. And this time I sent the letters and Mrs Pankhurst wrote back, asking for more. I’d only met her once or twice but I felt like I knew her – and perhaps she felt the same because she was obviously looking out for us.

I must have dozed off myself because it felt like just a couple of minutes before we were pulling up outside my mother’s terraced home in Wandsworth. I didn’t even remember crossing the river.

Bleary-eyed, I sat up. ‘Good luck, Minnie,’ I said. ‘I hope we meet again.’

She gave me a sleepy smile, without opening her eyes. ‘And you, Esther. Our paths are bound to cross soon.’

I thanked the driver and slid out of the cab, clutching the bag that contained my meagre belongings. At the front door, I took a deep breath, bracing myself, before I knocked.

It took an age – or perhaps it just felt that way – before my mother answered.

‘You’re back are you?’ she said.

‘I am.’

She left the door open and walked away back to the lounge, I supposed.

‘There’s no food,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘Not hungry.’ I paused. ‘Can I have a bath?’ I felt grubby and dusty, covered in prison muck.

Mother looked round at me, her mouth a pinched knot of disappointment. ‘Do what you like,’ she said. ‘You always do.’

I went up the steep steps to my bedroom. It was tucked under the eaves in the roof of the house, cramped and uncomfortable. My narrow bed was neatly made with clean sheets and a blanket and I managed a tiny smile; it seemed Mother hadn’t completely given up on me.

Looking at my bed, I was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. It wasn’t easy to have a proper night’s sleep in prison. Sharing a cell with other women, the cries and sobs and shouts that carried on long into the wee small hours, and the discomfort of the hard beds all made for an unpleasant experience. Which was the point, I supposed.

I pulled off the dress I was wearing, which still smelled of Holloway, and balled it up. I knew I wouldn’t throw it away – I didn’t have the luxury of having so many clothes that I could afford to discard them on a whim – but I didn’t want to wear it for a long while. I couldn’t sleep while I was so filthy, though, so I plodded back downstairs and heated some water for the bath, my arms aching with fatigue as I filled it.

It was chilly in the back room and I didn’t linger in the tepid water. I washed my body and my hair, which had got long while I was away. There was no sign of my mother. I guessed she was reading, either in her own room or in the lounge. She obviously didn’t want to speak to me, and I couldn’t blame her really. This was hard for her. Everything was hard for her.

Until my father had died, we’d had a good life. Not affluent, not by any means. But we’d lived well enough. He was a clerk, working for a firm of solicitors, and my mother had been a tailoress and after I came along she took in mending and made dresses from home. They were so proud of me when I got my job as a schoolteacher. I thought my father would burst.

But just two years later, he was gone and so was all our money – thanks to his gambling habit. A habit he’d kept secret from my mother and me, but which had left us with debts to pay. Faced with poverty, we’d had to move to this house – I looked round as I dried myself off with a thin towel – this cramped two-up, two-down, where we could hear everything the neighbours said and did, and which my mother hated. It was our lack of options, as two women with no man providing for us, while clearing up the mess that he’d left behind, and my rage over that helplessness, that had led me to the women’s suffrage movement. And the friends I’d made there had become my family while my mother grew ever more distant.

With heavy legs, I climbed the stairs to my room. Mother’s door was firmly shut, so I didn’t call goodnight. Instead I simply pulled my nightgown on over my head and slid beneath my sheets, ready for sleep.

Tomorrow, I thought, I would speak to Mother and clear the air. I would explain what Mrs Pankhurst and the other women were trying to do and make her understand how important it was. How vital it was that women like me and Mother had some agency over our own lives, and how allowing us to vote was just the start of that.

I reached down into my bag and felt about for the battered old notebook I wrote in. I would start by writing her a letter, I thought. I just needed to get her to listen …

* * *

I woke with a start a clear twelve hours later, my notebook still on my lap with just “Dear Mother” written at the top of the page, to the sound of the front door closing and the murmur of voices.

Sitting up in bed, I strained my ears to hear. It sounded like Mrs Williams, the headmistress of the school I taught in. But it was Saturday, and I’d been planning to visit her myself later to explain I was back and ask her for my job back.

Why was she here?

Quickly, I threw on a dress and shawl and twisted my plaited hair up on the back of my head, then as quietly as I could, I tiptoed down the stairs and sat at the bottom, to hear what was being said.

‘I’ll wake her,’ Mother said. ‘We can’t leave you waiting.’

‘She must be very tired after her …’ Mrs Williams tailed off.

‘Well, yes,’ said Mother awkwardly.

I felt like shouting: ‘Prison! I am tired because I have been in prison for six weeks and I couldn’t sleep.’ But I resisted. An outburst like that would hardly help the situation. And I feared it needed help because the only reason I could imagine for Mrs Williams arriving on our doorstep on a Saturday morning was not good.

Slowly, I stood up and made my way into the lounge.

‘Good morning, Mother,’ I said. ‘Mrs Williams.’

Mother stood up. She was twisting a handkerchief in her hands, winding it round her prominent knuckles. ‘I will make tea.’

Alone with Mrs Williams, I sat down on the edge of a chair. ‘What brings you here so early?’

Mrs Williams gave me a disbelieving glance. ‘You don’t know?’

‘I was hoping I might be mistaken.’

She shook her head. ‘I came to tell you we can no longer employ you at Trinity School,’ she said.

I closed my eyes. ‘Mrs Williams,’ I began. ‘Could I just explain …’

‘I’m afraid not.’ She stood up. ‘We cannot employ criminals at our school.’

‘I’m not a criminal,’ I said. ‘I was a political prisoner.’

She looked at me in disdain. ‘You engaged in a criminal act.’

‘I smashed a window.’

‘And that is illegal.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘Your employment is terminated,’ she said. ‘And I feel I must tell you that you will be similarly unwelcome at every school in London.’

‘Surely not every school?’ I said, sulky like one of my pupils.

‘Every school,’ Mrs Williams said. ‘Every one.’ She picked up her shawl and glared at me. ‘Please thank your mother for the tea but I have to be on my way.’

She spun round and stalked out of the room as I sank back against the chair. Why did I cheek her? Why didn’t I throw myself on her mercy, apologise, and beg for my job?

A creaky floorboard made me look up. Mother was standing there, her face drawn. She had dark circles under her eyes and I felt a flash of guilt that I’d caused her more pain.

‘You have to leave,’ she said.

I stared at her.

‘Now,’ she continued. ‘I can let your room out if you go. I can’t afford for you to be here. Not now you have no job.’

‘I’ll get another job.’

‘Not soon enough. No one will take a chance on you. Not now. Not after this. It could take months before you’re earning again.’

My eyes were hot with tears. ‘Mother, no.’

‘Esther,’ she said. ‘I’ve found a lodger already.’

‘Where will I go?’

She looked down at me and suddenly her sad face seemed full of menace. ‘I don’t know, Esther,’ she said. ‘And I don’t much care.’