we were to find one of those meetings, miss, you wouldn’t do anything awful, would you?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. I just want to be there, that’s all. Oh, isn’t it nice doing exactly as we please and no one at all to boss us about?’
Alice had to agree that it was. It was better than nice, in fact, because Miss Julia was no end of a good sport who, since they’d been in London, had treated her almost like an equal. And wasn’t she being stupid, Alice asked of her conscience, to start making a to-do about a meeting that might never come about when she was having such a fine time?
Where was the wrong in one forbidden gathering when Miss Julia hadn’t so far done anything awful, like meeting a young man or going without a gentleman escort to a music hall, even though she had the spunk to do either had she been of a mind to. Miss Julia had more about her than her brother Giles, who was quiet and bookish. Julia Sutton, it had more than once been remarked upon, should have been born a lad, so much devilment had she in her.
‘Exactly as we please? We won’t be looking for trouble, will we? Well, I am responsible for you and –’
‘You? Responsible for me? Oh, Hawthorn, you’re only a child!’
‘I’m eighteen!’ Well she would be, come June.
‘And I will be twenty-one soon, so it is I who must look after you.’
She was right, Alice conceded silently. Not only was Julia Sutton older but she was wiser, too, if you thought how far afield she had been: to Switzerland and France and to London ever so many times; whilst she, Alice Hawthorn, had never set foot outside the Riding until now.
But she was here: just to think how it would be when she got back, with everyone demanding to know what London was like, and gasping and exclaiming when she told them about sitting in a ladies-only first-class compartment, and riding through the crowded London streets to the house of Miss Anne Lavinia Sutton, so near to Hyde Park you could see the tops of the trees from your bedroom window. Indeed, the whole of Holdenby village would be curious about it. The comings and going of the Garth Suttons and the Place Suttons provided a fair proportion of Holdenby gossip – not to mention the goings-on of Mr Elliot Sutton.
What a journey it had been: such speed, and the two of them eating luncheon as the rest of the world rushed past the window of their compartment. It was only the second time Alice had been on a railway train, the first time so long ago that she couldn’t recall it at all and had had to take Aunt Bella’s word for it. So she wasn’t going to say anything about them being alone in Miss Sutton’s house, nor about trying to find a Votes-for-Women meeting, because these two weeks in London would stay with her for the rest of her life and be brought out fresh and bright when she was old to be lived through again. And the things she would have to tell Tom!
She smiled to remember that night – the buttercup night – and the yellow flowers which now lay carefully wrapped in tissue paper and placed inside her Bible at her favourite place. Luke, Chapter Two: And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn … Tom’s buttercup, and the Christmas story.
‘Hawthorn! What are you brooding about now?’
‘I – er – just about what you’ll be wearing tonight. Best tell me, miss, so I can give it a brush and a press.’
‘Something plain I suppose, and ordinary. Well, I shan’t want to look frivolous and uncaring, shall I? Women getting the vote is important – to be taken seriously.’
‘And you agree with it, miss – that some women should be given the vote?’
‘Not some women – all women over twenty-one. And not given it. It should be theirs by right.’
‘Yes, miss. I’ll put out the blue costume and the pale blue blouse, then?’
‘Whatever you think. And Hawthorn – nothing will happen tonight and, anyway, there mightn’t even be a meeting because they don’t exactly advertise them now. Wouldn’t do to have the police waiting to stop it before it had even started, now would it? So don’t look so worried.’
‘All right.’ There wasn’t anything else to say, come to think of it, because tonight something would happen, she was sure of it, though whether good or bad or a mixing of both, she couldn’t for the life of her tell. But they would be there, the two of them, at Speakers Corner, hoping to find a meeting. And finding trouble, like as not …
‘Thank you, Mary.’ Helen Sutton smiled as the parlourmaid set down a tray bearing afternoon tea.
‘Is it muffins?’ Her son lifted the plate cover.
‘No, it is not. Muffins are consolation for winter, Giles. It’s May, now, so it’s egg-and-cress sandwiches, I hope. Now pour my tea, won’t you? I feel like being spoiled today.’
‘What did my sister say in her letter?’ Giles Sutton demanded, passing the cup.
‘Julia seems to be having a grand time and says that Hawthorn is, too.’
‘Dear little Hawthorn. I miss her.’
‘Don’t you mean that you miss her looking after your dog?’
‘Well, I’ve got to admit that Morgan misses her too, but giving him his outings does get me out, once in a while.’
‘I don’t know why you spend so much time in that dull old library.’
‘I like it there.’ He liked the library better than any room in the house: the smell of old books and wax-polished furniture, the slow, soothing tick of the clock, and dust-motes hanging sunlit on the still air. Peace, there, and words for the reading. It was all he ever wanted, come to think of it, except to go to his father’s old college at Cambridge. ‘But how do you feel, Mother, now that it’s all behind you?’ He referred, hesitantly, to her period of mourning. ‘It’s good to see you out of that dreary black.’
‘That dreary black was necessary. I wore it for your father, Giles. Not because society demanded I should, but because it suited my mood.’
‘You still miss him, don’t you, dearest?
‘I miss him.’ And not so old, yet, that she didn’t want him, too, and the comfort of his nearness. ‘And I don’t know what your father would have thought to both his sons still being unmarried. One son interested only in tea-growing, and the other never so happy as when he’s got his nose in a book!’
But they were men, both of them, for all that. It was just that neither had yet decided upon a suitable wife. And at least they didn’t flaunt their masculinity like some not so far from this very house. Why, even the other night at Clementina Sutton’s dinner party, Elliot hadn’t been able to keep his eyes – or his hands, if she hadn’t been mistaken – off the parlourmaid who helped at table. She could almost feel sorry for her brother-in-law’s wife and the embarrassment their eldest son must cause her.
‘Why the sigh, Mother?’
‘Nothing, really. Just a sigh. A coincidence, I suppose, that I happened to be thinking about your cousin.’
‘Elliot? It’s a butcher’s daughter now, I
