I’ll Bring You Buttercups. Elizabeth Elgin
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it as Miss Julia; used to the size and the speed and the sound of it and learned to keep out of the way of motor drivers and cab drivers, all determined to run her over. Already they had window-gazed and walked in Hyde Park and St James’s Park and visited Westminster Abbey and stood, shaking with excitement, at the gates of Buckingham Palace – though not so much as a glimpse of the King and Queen had there been. And now they sat, feet aching from the London pavements, in the kitchen of Aunt Sutton’s tiny, tucked-away house, eating sandwiches and drinking tea and discussing where to go tonight.
‘We mustn’t waste money on theatres and things, Hawthorn. A lot of London is free, if you know where to go. Soon we shall take a trip on the Underground, but tonight we must try to find a meeting.’
‘A meeting, miss?’ Alice frowned, all the while thinking fearfully of trains that hurtled through dark tubes dug deep beneath London.
‘You know what kind of meeting.’
She knew, but like riding on a tube train, Alice was determined not to think too much about it, though it wasn’t any use ignoring the fact that Miss Julia was looking for a political meeting – a Votes-for-Women meeting – and if Lady Helen ever got to hear about it there’d be no end of a to-do.
‘Take care of my daughter, Hawthorn. Don’t let her lead you a dance,’ she’d said as they left Rowangarth, but when Alice thought about it, there wasn’t a lot a sewing-maid could do if her young mistress was set on going to one of those meetings; nothing, save go along with her because that, really, was why she was in London. But downright ridiculous it was, and a waste of time, because what would a woman do with a vote, even supposing she got one? At least that was what Cook wanted to know when they talked, one teatime, about the suffragettes who’d been sent to prison for causing an affray and had straight away refused all food. And the prison warders were compelled to force-feed them – for their own good – which couldn’t have been very pleasant, Alice remembered thinking.
‘Force-feed,’ Tilda scathingly remarked. ‘Isn’t nobody can make you eat if you don’t let your throat swallow.’
‘Happen not. But they force a tube down your throat,’ Cook had retorted, red-cheeked, ‘then they pour slops down it, so you’d be forced to eat. Force-feed, see? That’s what they mean by it.’
‘Meeting, miss?’ Alice closed her mind to the horror. ‘One of Mrs Pankhurst’s meetings? I don’t think her ladyship would like that, nor Miss Sutton.’
‘But my mother isn’t here, nor Aunt Sutton.’
No. Nor Miss Sutton’s maid, either. Indeed, they were alone in this house – apart from the cleaning woman who came mornings. It was unheard of, Alice brooded. Lady Helen would never have allowed the London trip had she known her sister-in-law’s live-in maid would be away in Bristol for a family wedding, and staying on there for a holiday.
‘I don’t know why Miss Sutton didn’t think to mention it to her ladyship – about us being here on our own, I mean.’
‘Nor do I,’ Julia grinned, ‘but I’m glad she thought she’d mentioned it.’ Always forgetful, her father’s elder sister – when it suited her, that was. ‘And you aren’t going to mention it when we get back home, are you, Hawthorn?’
Alice said she wasn’t, though she didn’t like being a party to deceiving Lady Helen. Suffragette meetings were illegal now; had been since last year when there’d been terrible trouble over breaking windows and knocking off policemen’s helmets and the forced feeding in prison. But Miss Julia was set on going, though if they ran away quickly when the police arrived, then surely no one need be any the wiser.
‘If 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