Cat and Mouse (21 page)

Of course you will say I encouraged her in this, in the early days. She and I used to share so much of our work together in the East End, producing surveys to show the squalor and poverty the poor wretched people lived in. I thought her so fine then, such a noble young woman taking on these great matters by my side, and I was proud to be a supporter of a Liberal government which was actually doing something about these things. But now she has abandoned all that for a single issue — and one that, if it does succeed, is likely to give the vote to women of property only — most of whom will vote Tory and bring back a Conservative government who will oppress the poor worse than ever, even! But she cannot see that. She even talks, God help me, of the nobility of smashing windows and setting fire to pillar-boxes — as if that will do anything but harm! If you had seen ladies, Deborah, as I have done — respectable women like yourself and Sarah — screaming and prodding at the Home Secretary outside Downing Street — one even kicked him! Can you believe that? To tell you the truth, Debbie, it filled me with laughter at first, but then anger and a terrible grief, mixed.

It is absurd, frightening, to know that my own wife has now twice been arrested for taking part in such a degrading pantomime. And then, when she is arrested, to find her starving herself until she looks gaunt and bony like the skeleton of the woman I once loved. She is at home just now, with a passable nurse — a Mrs Watson, a raging suffragette herself, I regret to say — and I have done a deal with the Home Secretary, McKenna, which I hope will keep her out of prison if she behaves herself, but there are no guarantees.

So you see, Deborah, when I sit alone and write to you like this I realise a little of what life must be like for you. The difference is that when Charles's UVF defy Parliament, it is seen by all the world as manly, respectable, dignified. He is threatening to plunge the nation into civil war — and why? To retain his hereditary right to oppress the poor Catholic Irish peasant! But if he is arrested, society won't make you feel ashamed, whereas with Sarah . . . Lord, Debbie, you are so lucky to have Tom. If only Sarah had not lost those babies, we should be a family like you, instead of two individuals who scarcely speak to each other for days on end. And if she had children she would surely never dare risk herself as she does. It is so sad. But perhaps when she is recovered . . .

The ship, meeting a freak wave, gave an unusual lurch, and Deborah stretched out a hand automatically, to catch a glass of water before it slid off the table. She let Jonathan's letter fall into her lap. Now it has happened, she thought. Sarah has done something worse than even he feared. He will be destroyed by it.

But we are all destroying ourselves. If he knew about my child . . .

She stared at the pool of lamplight swaying across the opposite wall, lost in thought. I suppose I could have predicted this, she thought. Years ago when they got married . . .

When Jonathan first appeared in their house Deborah met him at the door. She was seventeen, he was twenty-seven. She saw a tall young man, rather gawky, with a short dark beard. He wore a blazer, straw boater, white trousers and shoes. He looked at her intensely with eyes that were a pleasant brown, alight with interest. Then he took off his hat, and smiled. The smile was quite dazzling. She felt her cheeks flush with the warmth of it. He said: ‘You must be the younger sister.’

‘Yes, that's right,’ she said. 'I'm Debbie. Have you come to see . . .?’

‘Sarah? Yes. We're going boating on the river. Why don't you come too?’

‘Well, I'm not sure. I . . .’

‘It's all right. We're not going to spoon or anything like that. We won't embarrass you.’

And so it was settled, quite simply, with a charm that Deborah found enchanting. The three of them spent the whole afternoon on the river, taking it in turns to row, and trail their hands in the water, tying the boat up at a little island to eat their picnic out of the hamper. He talked at times intently of the social conditions of the poor, and how he was studying to become a lawyer to help them remedy it. Then, when he saw Deborah was becoming bored, he laughed and recited comic poetry instead. They came home tired and happy in the late June evening to reassure their worried and hypochondriac mother that they had not drowned. It had been one of the finest summer days that Deborah could remember.

There had been other days like that, but not many. Deborah had made the mistake of speaking to Sarah about her enchantment with the young man, and Sarah had said she should not get silly ideas, she was just a child, he was only being polite to her because they needed a chaperone, that was all. Jonathan was a rising young lawyer from a good family, with aspirations to go into politics. Often he had taken Sarah out to political meetings, where people talked about trade unions and income tax, and Deborah had only been allowed to a few of those. But then there had been other excursions — walks or visits to concerts or bicycle rides — when Deborah was allowed to come along. Sarah tended to monopolise the conversation with Jonathan, but Deborah enjoyed the excursions nevertheless, even though the others often left her for an hour at a time to pack up the hamper or read by herself. Jonathan was always charming and full of fun when they returned, Sarah flushed and rather quiet.

Deborah could still remember the unusual embarrassment of one particular afternoon. They had found a picnic spot by the river, and she had been left to guard the bicycles while the other two went off to walk or spoon or recite poetry or whatever it was that young couples did. On the way out Jonathan had been unusually charming, and Deborah, lying on the grass by herself, had been trying to imagine what it would be like to be kissed by him. It must be strange to be kissed by a man with a beard, she thought. Perhaps it would scratch, you might get bits of moustache in your mouth. But perhaps it would be nice. Other young men's faces looked a little rough in the afternoon, she had noticed, like sandpaper with the bristles coming through. She began to experiment with a tuft of horsehair from her bicycle saddle, stroking her own cheeks with it gently. It was nice. She closed her eyes. ‘My sweet darling,’ she murmured, ‘my sweet love.’ Then suddenly she heard a giggle, and the crack of a stick.

She had opened her eyes, and to her horror, Sarah and Jonathan had been staring down at her.

Sarah asked: ‘Debbie? What on earth are you doing?’

‘Oh, nothing. Just reciting a poem I learnt at school. It's nothing really.’ She felt her cheeks flush hot, but luckily Sarah was too full of her own news to be very interested.

‘How strange. Well?’

‘Well what?’ If Deborah hadn't been so embarrassed she would have noticed that her sister, too, was blushing. She dropped the horsehair surreptitiously on the grass.

‘Aren't you going to ask why we've been so long? Weren't you worried?’

‘No. Should I have been?’ Deborah's daydream had been so intense, she had no idea how long the others had been gone.

Jonathan smiled — that radiant smile he had in those days which somehow warmed her all through. ‘Debbie was too engrossed in her poetry to think about us, my dear,' he said. ‘But I think . . .’

‘No, let me tell her, Jonathan,’ Sarah said, in her impulsive, forceful way. ‘She's
my
little sister, not yours. What he is trying to tell you, Deborah dear, is that Jonathan and I are going to get married. And we would like you to be our bridesmaid.’

Deborah could never remember the rest of that afternoon. She knew that she had burst into tears, and that Sarah had looked shocked and a little angry, but whether she had recovered herself and congratulated them, she was not sure. Presumably she had, since her next memory was of following Sarah down the aisle. She had been holding Sarah's train, and feeling utterly hollow and desolate inside. When Jonathan had put the ring on Sarah's finger, Deborah drove her nails into the skin of her own ring finger so hard that the marks were still there the next day.

But that was all the fantasy of a girl of seventeen. Two years later, Deborah had a husband of her own, a handsome army officer whom she had known since she was twelve — just the kind of man Jonathan liked least. Jonathan had become a successful barrister and a Liberal Member of Parliament. The year after that Sarah had her first miscarriage, and Deborah gave birth to a son, in India. Even when she returned home, they lived on opposite sides of the Irish Sea, meeting once or twice a year at most. They were responsible married people.

So responsible that Sarah had just slashed a picture in the National Gallery, and Deborah was pregnant by an Irish trade union leader. And Jonathan sat up late at night in his house in Belgravia, writing to Deborah because he could not talk to his wife. At a time like this, Deborah thought — he might even be writing to me now!

She knew she would have to go and see Sarah, but somehow, the thought failed to touch her. Most likely she would receive a defiant lecture, find her offer of help despised. Instead, Deborah felt an intense yearning to talk to Jonathan. Part of it was protective, maternal almost — a desire to help him in his loneliness. But also it was a desire for understanding, comfort for herself. She wondered if she would have the courage to tell him about Rankin, and what he would say, if she did.

She smiled, and smoothed the letter gently against her dress, as though it were a child.

As for Charles, well, Jonathan is right. No doubt he will behave very well if he is arrested or has to fight. Young Tom will believe his father is a hero. And if anything happens to Charles he will have brought it on himself.

As, no doubt, Charles would say about me.

Deborah shivered suddenly, put the letter back in its envelope, and stood up to get ready for bed.

London

‘L
ONDON EUSTON!’

The train door slammed behind Deborah and she stood in a vast, grimy cathedral with iron vaults overhead, and pigeons flying through gouts of escaping steam. The shouts and whistles of guards and porters filled the air. A donkey, blinkered, pulled a line of Royal Mail trolleys along the platform.

‘Carry your bags, lady?’

‘Thank you, yes. These — and this one here.’ An old man, bent, fifty, white moustache and broken veins all down his face, hurrying away at surprising speed with her bags, his gammy right leg swaying to the side and back again as he pushed the trolley. Gracious — he'd almost gone! Quickly, she wormed her way between a flag-waving guard and a bowler-hatted clerk, and saw him pushing through a crowd outside W.H. Smith's newspaper stall. People — so many people everywhere! She bumped into a portly man in a tweed coat and top-hat, dodged some boys larking by the hot-chestnut stand, and emerged, breathless, hat slightly awry, at the taxi rank.

‘Belgrave Square, please.’

London overwhelmed her. After Glenfee it was so big, so crowded, so full of energy. She had always wondered how Sarah could bear to live here, but perhaps it suited her aggression, her impulsiveness. Deborah felt that if she stood still or hesitated she would be ignored, knocked over, pushed to one side. She felt at first panic, then exhilaration. It was a place where she didn't matter. Where she could do what she liked with no one to watch or complain.

Where she might solve the problem of her baby. Or find Rankin, and disappear. But then she would lose Tom for certain. Or was there a way around that, too?

Oh, there has to be!

But first, she had come to help her sister. And her brother-in-law too, if he needed it.

In the taxi she gazed curiously out at the fashions. Hats, she saw, were larger than ever; even quite ordinary-looking girls sported hats wide as bicycle wheels, laden with flowers and fruit and feathers. Several others, in Oxford Street especially, carried parasols. Nearly all the dresses she saw were gathered in with a belt or a sash at the waist, and those she liked most descended in several layers of frilly taffeta to the ankle. One or two women still wore the hobble skirt, tied with a bow just below the knee, but most, she was glad to see, had abandoned it. She had tried one once but thought it absurd. It was impossible to walk in it; she nearly fell over.

So much attention we women pay to the surface of things, she thought, while so much horror goes on underneath. And yet, if I had time, I would like to come back here and buy something for myself. Even bring Sarah with me. She might like that. It would take her mind off her militant protests, make her think of pleasing Jonathan, for a change.

But that's foolish. She won't be out for six months, unless she starves herself out, and then she'll be too weak to do anything except lie in bed for days. As for me, in a few months no fashionable clothes will fit me, whatever I buy.

Sarah's house was a four-storey terrace in a square in Belgravia. It was in a prosperous area; Jonathan was a successful barrister as well as a Liberal MP. As Deborah's taxi drew up she saw a large, shiny limousine parked outside. Several other cars were parked haphazardly along the street, and a horsedrawn milkfloat was trying to edge past. The milkman was engaged in heated debate with the chauffeur of the limousine. Several men in cloth caps stood around with notebooks in their hands, watching the door.

Deborah got out and persuaded the taxi-driver to carry her bags to the foot of the steps. As she was paying him, the front door opened and Jonathan came out.

She had not seen him for nearly a year, but he was little changed. Pale, perhaps, his face thinner under the beard, but she would have known him anywhere. Not as tall or as strong as Rankin but still a handsome man. To her he seemed scarcely to have changed from the smiling young man for whom she'd opened her mother's front door, all those years ago.

He did not notice her at first; and that was normal, too. He was as tall and wiry as ever; his face slightly more lined, perhaps, but not a trace of grey in the short black beard. He seemed to have cut himself, shaving perhaps — there was a small white plaster on one cheek. His eyes, even at this distance, were bright, intense. He wore a frock coat, pinstripe trousers, and had a top hat in his hand; and he was clearly in a hurry. He saw the reporters waiting at the foot of the steps, and stepped down quickly towards his chauffeur.