Polly's March Read online

  “You didn’t—?”

  “Of course not,” Edwina said, smiling. Then her face became serious. “Violet was referring to Emily Davison, our brave comrade who sacrificed herself to the Cause last summer.”

  Polly remembered that – the news vendors shouting in the streets, the front-page headlines. Emily Davison – Polly had forgotten the name – had gone to the Derby race meeting, and waited by the side of the track for the horses’ thundering approach; then she had run out into the path of the King’s own horse.

  Now, at the table, Polly sat screwing and unscrewing the top of her pen, thinking about it, imagining herself as Emily Davison. What must she have been feeling? Merging with the crowd, feigning an interest in the race itself and which horse was likely to win – and all the time steeling herself for the moment of breaking free, ducking under the rails for that wild dash under the horses’ flailing limbs. She had been killed – not immediately, but had been kicked and trampled so badly that she died in hospital a few days later. Was that what she intended? And, having died, she would never know if women did get the vote, or whether they had to go on and on chaining themselves to railings, smashing windows, slashing paintings in galleries…

  “Was it awful in prison?” Polly had asked Edwina, looking at her with a renewed shyness. It felt almost like talking to someone who had died, and come back to tell her about it.

  Violet answered first. “Needn’t have been as awful as Edwina made it. She refused to eat. Went on hunger strike. You’ll have read about it in the papers, I ’spect. She’s done all that before, course. Nearly starved herself to death, she did, till they stuck a feeding tube down her neck.” She darted a look at her friend. “Now the government’s got a new way of dealing with it,” she told Polly. “P’raps you know. No more force-feeding – no, they let the women starve themselves till they’re fit to collapse. Then they let them out, but only till they’ve got enough strength to be arrested again.”

  “So you might have to go back to prison?” Polly said, in a small voice. Part of her mind was working on a new problem: What will Mama and Papa say?

  “Not only might, but will,” Edwina said, with what Polly already recognized as her stubborn look. “Cat and Mouse, it’s called. You’ve seen the way a cat plays with a mouse, like a toy – letting it run, then clawing it back again? That’s what the prison authorities are doing to us – playing with us, treating us as their victims! But one thing I can tell you, Polly, is – we will never give up the fight, never! Not till women have the same rights as men!”

  Polly didn’t think she had ever met anyone as determined as Edwina. Ill as she was, she seemed to burn with passion, her whole body trembling with it.

  “Come on in now.” Violet tugged at her friend’s arm. “You’re over-tired. You won’t mind showing us the garden another time, will you, Polly? Time’s getting on, there’s still a lot to do.”

  “Please don’t fuss! I’m perfectly well!” Edwina retorted. But she seemed to sag and become smaller, as if the last blaze of energy had been snuffed out. “All right, then. Just a little rest, before we unpack the books. Polly, I’m so glad we’ve made friends!” she added, finding the energy for a cheery wave. “You must come up and visit us when we’re shipshape!”

  Polly watched them go back across the grass and in at the side door that led to the upper flats, Violet helping Edwina, who lifted her skirt with one hand and placed her feet very carefully on the step, like a doddery old lady. Inside, there were two staircases to be climbed to the top flat. Lily and Polly used to bound up two at a time when no one was around to tell them off, but it would be a long climb for someone as weak as Edwina.

  New friends! Had she really made new friends? How amazing that people so much older, and with such important things to do, should take notice of her!

  She unscrewed her pen, and wrote: They are suffragettes! They don’t seem to agree on how to go about it, but one of them, Edwina, has actually been in prison and been on hunger strike, and –

  “Polly?”

  Mama’s voice in the hallway. Quickly, Polly slipped the letter between the pages of her French book and pretended to be aroused from deep thought.

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “You must be nearly finished, surely? Do come and join us.”

  Polly closed her books and went through to the drawing room, ushered by her mother. Mrs. Dalby, Maurice’s mother, was sitting in a chair and half-turned towards the window; the tea tray was on a low table in front of her, and one of Mrs. Parks’ special strawberry sponge cakes, sprinkled with icing sugar.

  “Hello, Polly. You’re such a good girl, doing your prep so diligently!” said Mrs. Dalby, in the cooing voice Polly found so irritating. “Now do tell me.” She sat forward, hands on her knees. “Maurice told me he saw you talking to our new neighbours, a little while ago! I’m just eaten up with curiosity – do tell me everything you’ve found out!”

  Chapter Three

  Gossip

  “Oh, not much, really,” Polly said cautiously. Trust nosy old Maurice to have been watching! Not that there was anything wrong with talking in the garden, was there?

  Mama, passing Polly a slice of cake, gave her a sidelong look. “You’ve spoken to them? Why ever didn’t you tell me, when you came indoors?”

  “Two young ladies, Maurice said. Are they sisters?” probed Mrs. Dalby.

  “No, not sisters. Their names are Edwina Rutherford and Violet Cross.”

  “And where have they come from?”

  Polly flicked a glance at Mrs. Dalby, then at her mother, tempted to say, “From Holloway Prison.” Straightening the smile that twitched at her mouth, she replied instead, “I don’t know. We only talked for a few moments, and it was mainly about – about the walnut tree.”

  “Didn’t you find out anything about them at all?” said Mrs. Dalby, looking quite crestfallen. “Are they young women of private means? Presumably their families are renting the flat for them? I shouldn’t imagine they’d be working girls, would you, Catherine?” she asked Polly’s mother. “There’s a maid, my Elsie told me – living in one of the attic rooms.”

  “I shall invite them to tea!” declared Mama. “Then we’ll meet them properly – find out all about them. Early next week, I shall suggest – when they’ve had time to settle themselves. You must come as well, Meredith!”

  Polly felt uneasy. She wanted to keep her new friends to herself.

  “I’d be delighted,” said Mrs. Dalby. “After all, we ought to know who’s living under our roof. But I really must be going.” She got to her feet, straightened her skirt and adjusted the lace collar of her blouse. “Polly, do come down and play chess with Maurice if you get lonely – I know how badly you must be missing Lily. Now, Catherine, my dear, make sure you look after yourself.” She patted Mama’s arm. “Not too much standing, remember! I’m sure I’ve told you, when I was expecting Maurice, how dreadfully my ankles swelled? Rest every afternoon with my feet up, that’s what the doctor advised, but of course I’m far too active for that. You must be so excited, Polly! Not much longer to wait. Such fun it’ll be, having a little brother.”

  Polly swallowed a mouthful of cake. “How do you know it’ll be a brother?”

  “Well, or sister. But—” Mrs. Dalby touched Mama’s arm again, and gave her a twinkling look. “But I have a feeling it’s a boy this time, and my feelings rarely let me down! Goodbye, then. Goodbye, dear.” And at last she was gone, in a waft of lily-of-the-valley.

  Mama rang the bell for Mrs. Parks to come for the tea things. She stood up in the awkward way she had developed since becoming so large; she stifled a yawn, and put a hand to the small of her back. “I really do think I’d better lie down and rest before dinner. Do make sure you put your things away, won’t you, darling? You know how Papa hates to see things lying around. Did you finish your prep?”

  “Nearly,” said Polly. “Mama, do you hope the new baby’s going to be a boy?”

  Mama looked at her.
“Well, of course it would be lovely to have one of each! And Papa would be thrilled to have a son. But we shall both be delighted, whichever it is.”

  “Wasn’t Papa thrilled when I was born? Was he disappointed?”

  “Polly!” Mama touched Polly’s hair, smoothing back a wayward strand that escaped from its pigtail. “No one was disappointed, of course not – you know we couldn’t love you more, both of us! But you have to understand that there’s a special thing about fathers and sons. A son, you see, will keep our name, and will marry and have children and grandchildren. Whereas you’ll change your name when you get married, just as I did, and your children will have your husband’s name, not Stubbs.”

  “Supposing I don’t meet someone I want to marry?”

  Mama laughed, and patted her shoulder. “Darling, of course you will! When you’re old enough, you’ll meet all sorts of suitable young men. Some young man will come along, don’t you worry, who will think himself very lucky indeed! If you tidy up your things, there’ll be time for your piano practice – there’s a good girl. Dinner will be at six.”

  Polly went back to the dining table, her letter and her French prep, still thinking about her shadowy future husband. Mama hadn’t really answered her question. Polly hadn’t asked whether anyone would want to marry her; she had been wondering whether she would meet someone she might choose. It wasn’t the same thing. Anyway, Polly wanted to be an explorer. She wanted to travel the world and see all sorts of places and people. There wouldn’t be time for a husband, unless he was an explorer as well.

  She couldn’t imagine Edwina Rutherford waiting for some nice, suitable young man to come along and think himself very lucky. Nor Violet Cross.

  Supposing the only suitable young man she met turned out to be Maurice? She’d sooner marry a duck-billed platypus, she thought, opening her French book at the page where the letter was hidden; she’d sooner marry a wart hog. Lily, who had recently been to her cousin’s wedding, had told Polly that in the marriage service, the bride had to promise to obey her husband. That meant doing whatever he told you, the way Mama always did what Papa said. Really, you might as well stay on at school, if someone was going to carry on telling you what to do and not do.

  Imagine promising that to someone as slimy as Maurice! Polly unscrewed her pen lid and stuck out her tongue, pulling the sort of face Mrs. Parks said she should avoid, in case the wind changed and she got stuck like it. She’d rather marry a toad.

  Chapter Four

  Slug

  “Can you imagine,” Polly said to Maudie Marchant at morning break, “wanting something so badly that you’d die for it?”

  Maudie finished chomping a mouthful of apple before answering. “No,” she said at last. “If you were dead, what would be the point?”

  “You might want something for someone else,” Polly explained, “not just for yourself.”

  Maudie considered this possibility, nibbling round the apple core till it was little more than an extension of its stalk. “No. I can’t think of anything I’d want that much. Can you?”

  If Polly were honest, the answer would have been no; but instead she asked, “What about the suffragettes – you know, getting sent to prison and going on hunger strike?”

  “Oh, them.” Maudie had eaten all there was to eat of the apple, but instead of flicking the core into the bushes at the edge of the playground, as Polly would have done, she held it carefully by the stalk, no doubt waiting to put it in the litter bin on the way back to the classroom: Maudie did everything according to the rules. “My father says they’re just vandals and hooligans. Lock them up and throw away the key, that’s what he says. Have them horsewhipped. If they behave like gangs of ruffians, making trouble in the streets, how do they expect to get the vote?”

  Polly was silent for a moment. Her father said exactly the same sort of thing, tutting as he read the newspaper, reading out bits to Mama. He seemed to think that the campaigning women belonged to an entirely different species from his wife, who sat demurely with her needlework, nodding and agreeing with whatever he said. What was Papa going to say when he found out that two suffragettes (or one suffragette and one suffragist: Polly was unclear about the distinction) were living in the very same house, sharing his roof? What would he say about Mama inviting them to tea? Perhaps, Polly thought, she ought to warn them; tell them to keep quiet, and talk only about the weather and the latest fashions and other polite, everyday things. Or perhaps it would be better if they didn’t come at all, if they just smiled politely and said How do you do? to anyone they met on the way in or out.

  In the classroom, Polly paused by the globe on the window table to play her favourite game. She made it spin on its stem as fast as it would go; then she closed her eyes, touched a finger to the whirling surface – but not hard enough to slow its turning – and waited for it to come to a complete stop. Then she looked at where her finger was resting, and thought: That’s where I might go, one day, when I can go anywhere I like. It felt a bit like someone telling her fortune by reading a crystal ball, only this ball had all the countries of the world printed on it. Yesterday it had been Alaska, and she’d imagined snowy wastes, frozen rivers, and gold-panners. Today – she looked carefully – her finger was planted in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, nowhere near any land at all. Of course, explorers would have to spend months at a time on sea voyages. She might be seasick, but she would have to put up with that…

  “Did I lend you my new pen-wiper?” Maudie asked. Polly sighed with impatience, pulled back to the schoolroom, and the prospect of algebra with Miss Dawes.

  Lily’s departure had taken all the fun out of dawdling home and finding detours, going to see the dairy horses in Old Church Street, or up to the King’s Road to look in shop windows, or the long way back along the Embankment to watch the boats going past and sniff the salty air that carried a tang of the sea.

  Back at home, Polly took her satchel upstairs, then went straight out to the swing tree in the hope of seeing the new neighbours there. Or maybe they would see her, and come out to finish their “tour”?

  But Maurice was there instead, sitting on the swing – her swing! – scuffing his feet on the bare earth underneath, and grinning at her. He was in the brown uniform of his school, St. Dunstan’s. St. Dungstan’s, Polly called it, as the boys’ blazers were exactly the colour of the heaped, steaming manure left in the road by tradesmen’s horses.

  “Greetings, Pegs.” His grin widened. His red hair was like a thatch, and his face all freckled. Pegs was his nickname for her, since he’d seen her initials on her pencil box. She hated being called that. It made her think of clothes pegs, peg legs, square pegs in round holes.

  “Hello, Horrible Horace.”

  Maurice smiled back as if she’d said something nice. It was impossible to offend him.

  “Did you know there’s a rhyme about walnut trees?” he said, reaching out to touch its bark. “It goes like this: A dog, a wife and a walnut tree, the more you beat them, the better they be. My grandad told me.”

  “That’s stupid,” Polly retorted. “It’s cruel to beat dogs. And why would anyone beat a walnut tree? Only very rough men beat their wives. And why would anyone be better for being beaten? It would only make you bad-tempered and upset.”

  Maurice grinned again, as if he knew something she didn’t. Lazily, he got off the swing. “Come and see what I’ve found.”

  She might have guessed it would be something unpleasant. At the farthest end of the garden, where the shrubs grew thickly, he pushed aside the lowest leaves of a hydrangea, and revealed an enormous slug – black and shiny, big as a sausage – in the dampness underneath.

  “Urrgh!” Polly couldn’t help leaping back. There, he’d made her do it again! – behave just as he wanted. She wasn’t usually silly about slugs or other creeping forms of life. After all, she was going to meet all kinds of creatures – slimy or scaly, feathered or furred – when she became an explorer. She’d be very annoyed with herse
lf if she jumped back squealing each time she came across something strange.

  “Do you know what it is?” Maurice asked.

  “’Course I do. It’s a slug, stupid. One of your relations, I expect. Tell the gardener to get rid of it.”

  “It’s not just an ordinary slug.” Maurice made his eyes round and his voice low and menacing. “It’s the very rare Nocturnal Man-Eating Slug, feared by all travellers and explorers. Do you know what they do? They wait till night-time, then they creep across the lawn. They get into houses, creep in through cellar openings and ventilation grilles. There’s no way of keeping them out. Then they smell out their victims. They like flesh – that’s why they’re so enormous. Specially children’s flesh – it’s not so tough. While you’re fast asleep, they come sliming all over you, waiting to feast on flesh—”

  “Oh, stop it!” Polly felt the skin on her arms and legs creeping, and only by an effort of will forced herself not to turn and run. “They’ll find you first then, won’t they, on the ground floor? I’d watch out if I were you.” She turned to claim the swing. “And be very careful not to sleep with your mouth open,” she added over her shoulder.

  Reaching the swing, she heard the creak of a window opening above her, and a voice called down. “Polly!”

  She stepped back to see past the tree branches and up to the second floor, where Violet Cross was shaking a duster out of the window. “I’ve got the kettle on,” Violet called. “Want to come and see the chaos up here?”

  Maurice hadn’t followed, and was poking about in the undergrowth, no doubt looking for more man-eating slugs, but she made a point of calling back to him, “Excuse me. I’ve got someone interesting to talk to.”

  Chapter Five

  Cat and Mouse

  It was only after Polly had been in the drawing room of the top flat for ten minutes that she remembered to feel sad that it was no longer Lily’s. It hardly looked the same at all: the familiar furniture had gone, there were new curtains up at the window, and the floor was stacked with boxes, higgledy-piggledy.