Park Lane (12 page)

The books are packed tight as six in a bed up here, takes all of a tug, and not easy with the duster too, and she’s near tipped off, and with her hovering ten foot up what would she have broken first? They wouldn’t keep her here then, not all crippled, when she’s as good as just arrived. And if she said she was dusting behind the book, just that one, nobody would believe her.

Once she’s down she lifts up her skirt, pulls her stomach in and squeezes the book up above her waistband. She’d left her apron loose especially: now she ties it as tight as she can and still breathe.

She’s moving the steps on to A to make it look as though she’s gone right round with the duster. She hurries, worrying that some-one’ll start wondering why she isn’t in the saloon yet, and moves the ladder too quick. There’s a thundering from the wheels, enough to make her jump. In the silence she can hear pointy-heeled steps ringing towards the room.

‘What in God’s name?’

‘Ever so sorry, Mrs Wainwright,’ and Grace bobs.

‘You could have shaken the devil awake. What were you doing?’

‘Just saw a bit more and nipped back to catch it.’

‘Well, you should’ve caught it the first time. And don’t try nipping anywhere with those steps. That feather duster can reach from the folding ones, if I’m not mistaken.’

Please go, thinks Grace. Go, so I don’t have to walk past you with this book under my pinny.

‘Is it all done, now?’

‘Yes, Mrs Wainwright.’

‘Well, then, straighten the steps and into the saloon.’

From behind the ladder, Grace bobs another curtsey, clutching her stomach as though there’s a baby in there, hoping Mrs Wainwright doesn’t think that, that’s just the sort of trouble she’d
be on the lookout for. But anyone who knows Grace … but they don’t, do they?

The service stairs are on the far side of the hall. She walks fast, wants to trot, but the book’ll be banging around the bottom of her bloomers. She goes up the stairs, her hand pressed against her. When she’s in her room, she loosens her apron and lifts her skirt and petticoat before easing the book out. As she holds it out in front of her, her head empties and she feels as if she’s going to fall. If she had any breakfast in her, it’d be on the floor. Where’s she to put it, this book, and keep it, all week too? If she had any sense, she’d’ve waited until Saturday. If she had any sense … Well, too late now, Grace Campbell.

The chest of drawers. There’s Mary, though. The first week Grace was here she came in to find Mary going through her drawers. Without a flush of embarrassment, Mary had come out with Oh, my drawers are at the top now, easy to forget. Grace imagines finding Mary holding up the book and her stomach turns again – and she needs to be back downstairs, minutes ago. There’s her suitcase, the edge of it coming out from under her bed, no lock on it, but if Mary’s already looked in it, she’ll think it’s empty still. Grace takes an armful of clothes from her drawers and burrows the book inside them and into the case.

She’s out of the door when she turns back to check the case. She can see it as though it reads
Open Me
across the front. She rushes back to her drawers and pulls out her woollen shawl. She’ll be cold without it but it’s the thickest thing she has. Her mattress is so thin a child could lift it, and up it comes. Grace wraps the book in her shawl to protect it from the wire netting underneath, and slips it under the pillow end.

As she comes downstairs again, Grace jumps. Mrs Wainwright is standing to the side of the staircase as though she’s been waiting for Grace, and Grace’s chest tightens. Imagine, just imagine if she’d seen Grace going up with the book. She feels white, and red, and
Lord knows what else, her face must look like a convict’s already. Smile, Grace Campbell, she tells herself, take that look away.

‘Where have you been, Grace?’

‘Upstairs, Mrs Wainwright.’

‘Upstairs?’

Grace folds her hands over her belly and dips her head.

Mrs Wainwright pauses.

‘Well, we all have to get on, you know. I can’t have every one of you off for a couple of days each month. Anyhow, keeping moving will take your mind off it. Into the saloon; you can take a hot water bottle after luncheon. And, Grace …’

‘Yes, Mrs Wainwright.’

‘I expect more of you, Grace. You know that.’

8

BEA’S EYES OPEN EARLY. SHE RINGS THE BELL BESIDE HER BED
and, when Grace arrives, asks her for coffee and toast. She is certainly hiding by having breakfast upstairs. Rightly so, for Mother can scent subterfuge at fifty paces, and the thought of it sets Bea’s mind abuzz. Not a chance she can sit still enough for breakfast in bed. She slithers out from between the sheets before even reaching for her dressing gown and feels the chill of the morning; then, silk-wrapped, she walks over to the dressing table. The triptych looking-glass sends back three Beatrices. I am legion, she thinks, a demonstration of suffragettes in myself. If that’s what I have now become, converted in a single evening by a woman whom I have spent every hour since yearning to follow. Though not, of course, all the way.

Bea searches her features for some sign of metamorphosis, wondering what a suffragette should look like. Her recollections turn from the made-up woman next to her, the slight lady in expensive grey, to the bodyguard and Mrs Pankhurst herself, black and feathered. Then there is Celeste and her sartorial perfection. However, and bother her for vanishing last night, Celeste is a long way from Bea in suffragette hierarchy. Nonetheless, there is a limit to how plain Bea can bring herself to look. Not too detailed, fine. A wide, gathered ‘practical’ skirt, no.

Bea looks down at the pots on her dressing table. Compared to Clemmie’s, or even Mother’s spread, they are few. Cold cream, powder. She is not sure whether she should powder for a daytime’s work but her nose is already shining and she’s not a child. Yes, powder, and decent hair; when Grace comes back with breakfast Bea will ask her to do it. Bea looks back down at her pots and sees the toast already beside her. She didn’t see or hear Grace come in. She takes a piece from the rack and tears off a corner, before letting it drop, mangled, on to the plate. Her stomach is too tight to do any more than pick. She reaches for a comb, and starts to pin her own hair.

At a quarter past nine Bea is ready to leave. She’s taken an umbrella from the stand – a near guarantee that it will not rain, but gripping the handle makes her feel a little empowered. Joseph opens the door for her, and the stench of engine oil and horse pushes into her nose as she waits for the footman to find her a taxi. Once Joseph has brought one to the door, Bea manoeuvres herself and hobble skirt inside. It is not until he has closed the cab door behind her that she gives the driver the address she has memorised.

The taxi circles the block before turning north. In Curzon Street Bea glances back and looks up for the crack in the side of the house. It seems longer than it was two days ago and she wonders how far it will go. Perhaps it will lengthen until the exterior wall crumbles away, exposing the dining room below to the world outside, rubble sitting on the chairs, the dark green walls and Venetian and pastoral scenes veiled in pale powder. She finds the image somehow both sad and, in a strange way, liberating.

The taxi turns up on to Park Lane and heads north past the shuttered windows of the many who, at this time in the morning, are not even halfway through their night’s sleep. The other side of the road is a river of square boxes of motors and teetering omnibuses and beyond them, half a dozen riders are cantering along the sand track inside the park, just as Bea should perhaps be
doing. But Bea’s taxi draws her away. At Marble Arch the pavement fills. A dozen bus routes are emptying their passengers into a quivering skein of dark, tailored wool moving in search of the next bus, or the steps down into the Underground station. Bea glances west along the north edge of the park towards Campden Hill Square. Flashes of recollection keep coming back to her – of all parts of the evening. Though not, she tells herself, in the correct order of importance, and she tries to put them back to where they should belong. It takes no small effort, for the word ‘entertainment’ is still driving her teeth together.

It’s further than Bea thinks to Maida Vale, and the further she goes the more she wonders what she is doing, going to join these half-mad, club-wielding women. She could still turn back. There’s a lunch she could go to, and she really should see about a dress for her dance. No, Beatrice, she tells herself, she must stick with it. Surely, if you have learnt anything over this year, it is not to assume anything at all until you have seen or heard it.

The new red bricks and white pillars of Lauderdale Mansions spread right along the street, broken every few yards by an identical doorway. The taxi has passed along through a dozen similar streets and avenues of red-brick mansion blocks. Bea’s heart is now shaking her ribcage as she wonders which is the right door. The number has vanished from her head.

The note of apology came from Celeste yesterday morning, the envelope again written by her maid. Celeste had been called to the back of the house to help with Emmeline’s exit. Not a chance of finding Bea again. The invitation was still there, though, to come along. Tomorrow would be good, for the paper goes to press on Thursday afternoons and it’s all hands on deck. Celeste will send her name round, in any case. Here’s the address.

She’s just going to look, she tells herself, just for a few hours. She wants to see what it’s like, and it is certainly a glimpse into another world. If anybody offers her a brick, she’ll simply decline. I will be
tough, she thinks. The world, as she has recently learnt, belongs to the tough.

Bea pulls Celeste’s note out of her purse, asks the taxi to stop and steps out into air clearer than that of Park Lane. There is less traffic here, less everything, the road is a valley of seamless red-brick walls and so quiet. Bea is careful; they could be being watched, Celeste said. Don’t dawdle, thinks Bea, but don’t make a dash for it either – head down, and the brim’ll hide half my face. My God, she’s behaving as though she’s in a John Buchan novel. Stay calm, Beatrice, and try to think of what a lark it is. She is not sure whether it is excitement or fear that she is feeling. It occurs to her that there may be all too little difference between the two.

There’s no doorman at the bottom of each staircase in these new blocks of flats. In any case, Lauderdale Road is not that sort of street. Instead there is a brass button next to the flat number outside. It’s not a straight ring that she’s to do, there’s a code to be followed. Memorise, then destroy this, Celeste had written. Bea hasn’t, thank God, for her head’s a sieve this morning.

The bell button glides into its brass surround. Three short sharp buzzes, a pause then two long ones. Another pause and three short sharp ones again. Then she waits, nose to a pair of thick wooden double doors, firmly locked. She wonders what might happen if they can tell she is only looking. Will they, she wonders, ask her to smash a window to prove her loyalty, or march her straight out?

The door is opened by a starkly dark-haired and white-skinned young woman in a wide-collared blouse and a full, practical navy skirt and when Bea notices this her heart sinks a little. The woman beckons Bea to come in quickly.

‘Oh,’ says the woman. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘I’m here to help.’

The woman looks Bea up and down. As she does, the heels on Bea’s boots feel too high, her narrow skirt too tight. The woman’s eyes fix on Bea’s pale blue coat, her eyes move down to the
embroidered hems and her eyebrows rise as though Bea has come riding in a ball dress.

‘Help with what?’

‘With, well. With the cause.’

‘What cause?’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve made some mistake.’

Bea turns towards the door and takes Celeste’s letter out again. No, she’s read it right, but after all that Celeste has given her the wrong address. What a fool Bea has been, shows that she shouldn’t have come, should have left well alone.

The white-faced woman speaks. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Celeste Masters.’ Bea is speaking to the door.

‘And your name?’

‘Beatrice.’

‘Beatrice what?’

‘Masters. She’s my aunt.’

‘Let me check. Wait here.’

The hallway smells of wood polish and the faint dust left by dozens of footsteps. On the side, at shoulder level, are rows of wooden pigeon holes for post. Bea scans the numbers and names next to them. Morgan, Holmes, Black, Clark. Beside the number of the buzzer she has rung: Hall.

The woman must be a gymnast, she’s back so quickly. She nods her head towards the stairs.

‘Well, I guess Celeste’s entitled to slide her relations into the top drawer. I suppose you must have something to offer. Bring your umbrella. Best not to let on how many of us are up there.’ Ignoring the lift, the woman runs back up the wide stairs. Bea, surprised into obeisance, follows as best she can, nearly splitting the hem of her skirt with each step, wondering whether ‘top drawer’ is better or worse than ‘entertainment’. Well, Beatrice, she tells herself, whatever it is about you that prompts people to say these things, it must change.

When Bea walks into the pale narrow hallway of the apartment
a woman, clutching papers in one hand and brandishing a pen in the other, scurries across it ahead of her. Someone else appears from one unseen door and disappears into another. Both move quickly and both, Bea notices, are wearing practical skirts.

The door guardian turns to her.

‘Celeste’s not here. Coat on peg. Boots off.’

‘Boots off?’

‘Keeps the noise down.’

Bea finds herself, again, doing exactly what she is told. She hangs her coat then sits down on a chair obviously provided for the purpose, and adds her boots to a long line along the hallway. In stockinged feet, she follows her guide through the first door on the left, anticipating the next instruction which she expects she will, again, obey.

The room is painted a pale mauve, with a window almost the length of the far side. In the centre is a large dining table surrounded by five women, fingers glued to typewriter keys and piles of writing paper and newspaper spread around them. They are older than Bea, more gaunt than matronly, and their collars are buttoned up to their necks, as their hands peck at the keyboards and papers. Papers are being straightened in short sharp jabs, fingers licked and pages leafed through so quickly that Bea fancies she should be able to hear them burr, but the cacophony of clattering keys drowns all other sound out.