The Secret Letter
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Mother looked round at me, her mouth a pinched knot of disappointment. ‘Do what you like,’ she said. ‘You always do.’
I went up the steep steps to my bedroom. It was tucked under the eaves in the roof of the house, cramped and uncomfortable. My narrow bed was neatly made with clean sheets and a blanket and I managed a tiny smile; it seemed Mother hadn’t completely given up on me.
Looking at my bed, I was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. It wasn’t easy to have a proper night’s sleep in prison. Sharing a cell with other women, the cries and sobs and shouts that carried on long into the wee small hours, and the discomfort of the hard beds all made for an unpleasant experience. Which was the point, I supposed.
I pulled off the dress I was wearing, which still smelled of Holloway, and balled it up. I knew I wouldn’t throw it away – I didn’t have the luxury of having so many clothes that I could afford to discard them on a whim – but I didn’t want to wear it for a long while. I couldn’t sleep while I was so filthy, though, so I plodded back downstairs and heated some water for the bath, my arms aching with fatigue as I filled it.
It was chilly in the back room and I didn’t linger in the tepid water. I washed my body and my hair, which had got long while I was away. There was no sign of my mother. I guessed she was reading, either in her own room or in the lounge. She obviously didn’t want to speak to me, and I couldn’t blame her really. This was hard for her. Everything was hard for her.
Until my father had died, we’d had a good life. Not affluent, not by any means. But we’d lived well enough. He was a clerk, working for a firm of solicitors, and my mother had been a tailoress and after I came along she took in mending and made dresses from home. They were so proud of me when I got my job as a schoolteacher. I thought my father would burst.
But just two years later, he was gone and so was all our money – thanks to his gambling habit. A habit he’d kept secret from my mother and me, but which had left us with debts to pay. Faced with poverty, we’d had to move to this house – I looked round as I dried myself off with a thin towel – this cramped two-up, two-down, where we could hear everything the neighbours said and did, and which my mother hated. It was our lack of options, as two women with no man providing for us, while clearing up the mess that he’d left behind, and my rage over that helplessness, that had led me to the women’s suffrage movement. And the friends I’d made there had become my family while my mother grew ever more distant.
With heavy legs, I climbed the stairs to my room. Mother’s door was firmly shut, so I didn’t call goodnight. Instead I simply pulled my nightgown on over my head and slid beneath my sheets, ready for sleep.
Tomorrow, I thought, I would speak to Mother and clear the air. I would explain what Mrs Pankhurst and the other women were trying to do and make her understand how important it was. How vital it was that women like me and Mother had some agency over our own lives, and how allowing us to vote was just the start of that.
I reached down into my bag and felt about for the battered old notebook I wrote in. I would start by writing her a letter, I thought. I just needed to get her to listen …
* * *
I woke with a start a clear twelve hours later, my notebook still on my lap with just “Dear Mother” written at the top of the page, to the sound of the front door closing and the murmur of voices.
Sitting up in bed, I strained my ears to hear. It sounded like Mrs Williams, the headmistress of the school I taught in. But it was Saturday, and I’d been planning to visit her myself later to explain I was back and ask her for my job back.
Why was she here?
Quickly, I threw on a dress and shawl and twisted my plaited hair up on the back of my head, then as quietly as I could, I tiptoed down the stairs and sat at the bottom, to hear what was being said.
‘I’ll wake her,’ Mother said. ‘We can’t leave you waiting.’
‘She must be very tired after her …’ Mrs Williams tailed off.
‘Well, yes,’ said Mother awkwardly.
I felt like shouting: ‘Prison! I am tired because I have been in prison for six weeks and I couldn’t sleep.’ But I resisted. An outburst like that would hardly help the situation. And I feared it needed help because the only reason I could imagine for Mrs Williams arriving on our doorstep on a Saturday morning was not good.
Slowly, I stood up and made my way into the lounge.
‘Good morning, Mother,’ I said. ‘Mrs Williams.’
Mother stood up. She was twisting a handkerchief in her hands, winding it round her prominent knuckles. ‘I will make tea.’
Alone with Mrs Williams, I sat down on the edge of a chair. ‘What brings you here so early?’
Mrs Williams gave me a disbelieving glance. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I was hoping I might be mistaken.’
She shook her head. ‘I came to tell you we can no longer employ you at Trinity School,’ she said.
I closed my eyes. ‘Mrs Williams,’ I began. ‘Could I just explain …’
‘I’m afraid not.’ She stood up. ‘We cannot employ criminals at our school.’
‘I’m not a criminal,’ I said. ‘I was a political prisoner.’
She looked at me in disdain. ‘You engaged in a criminal act.’
‘I smashed a window.’
‘And that is illegal.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Your employment is terminated,’ she said. ‘And I feel I must tell you that you will be similarly unwelcome at every school in London.’
‘Surely not every school?’ I said, sulky like one of my pupils.
‘Every school,’ Mrs Williams said. ‘Every one.’ She picked up her shawl and glared at me. ‘Please thank your mother for the tea but I have to be on my way.’
She spun round and stalked out of the room as I sank back against the chair. Why did I cheek her? Why didn’t I throw myself on her mercy, apologise, and beg for my job?
A creaky floorboard made me look up. Mother was standing there, her face drawn. She had dark circles under her eyes and I felt a flash of guilt that I’d caused her more pain.
‘You have to leave,’ she said.
I stared at her.
‘Now,’ she continued. ‘I can let your room out if you go. I can’t afford for you to be here. Not now you have no job.’
‘I’ll get another job.’
‘Not soon enough. No one will take a chance on you. Not now. Not after this. It could take months before you’re earning again.’
My eyes were hot with tears. ‘Mother, no.’
‘Esther,’ she said. ‘I’ve found a lodger already.’
‘Where will I go?’
She looked down at me and suddenly her sad face seemed full of menace. ‘I don’t know, Esther,’ she said. ‘And I don’t much care.’
Chapter 6
Esther
It took just minutes for me to pack. I had so few belongings nowadays that my whole life fitted into a carpetbag.
I went downstairs, my bag thumping against the walls, and found Mother in the kitchen, washing up.
‘I’m going now,’ I said.
‘Goodbye.’ She didn’t look at me.
‘Do you want me to send word of my new address?’
She shrugged. ‘Whatever you see fit.’
Without another word – what else was there to say? – I turned and, with my shoulders hunched, I left the house. I walked a little way along the street and then stopped. I was at a loss. I had no idea where to go. Not even which direction to walk in.
I supposed I should try to find a job first and then a room? Or would it make more sense to find a room first? I had picked up a few coins from my drawer at home, but it wouldn’t go far. I wasn’t even sure it would be enough to cover any rent up front. Would landladies want rent up front? I had no idea.
Hauling my bag on to my shoulder, I wandered through the narrow streets of Wandsworth, unconsciously heading back towards Stockwell and the home where I’d grown up. Another family lived there now. A family with lots of children to fill the rooms where I’d played by myself as a child. A family with a mother who was loving and full of laughter – like mine had once been – and a father who really was the sort of man everyone believed him to be, and not secretly gambling away his family’s future.
I walked along the side of the park towards our old house. It wasn’t far from here that I’d first met Mrs Pankhurst’s daughter, Christabel.
I’d been walking home one day, over a year ago, and just like today I’d taken the long way round because I’d wanted to see our old house again. I’d walked down an alleyway where the back gardens of the houses on our former street met the back gardens of the next road along, but what I’d found was a group of women. A large group actually. They were all gathered in the street, staring up at a woman who was leaning out of the window of a house on the corner and talking.
The houses were tall here – proud, I’d always thought – and the woman was small so she was using the window as a stage. It was clever.
I’d stopped just where I was and listened, mesmerised. She talked about how women’s views needed to be represented and stated that she believed all women who paid taxes should be allowed to vote. I found myself nodding along, as her words struck a chord with me. It was as though this woman knew exactly how I was feeling. About how helpless I’d felt since my father’s death, how frustrated I was that I had no agency over my own life, and how absolutely furious it all made me.
And then she said something that resonated with me – with the anger I felt inside.
‘We’ve been polite for forty years,’ she said. Standing in the street, I snorted. My mother was polite. She was too polite. She just went about her business, struggling through life and trying to keep her head above water, never arguing because it was unladylike. Never saying a bad word about my father, even though he’d left us with nothing.
Above me, the woman was still speaking. ‘We’ve signed petitions and asked nicely and nothing has changed,’ she said. ‘It is time to adopt vigorous methods.’
The women below her all cheered and the speaker carried on.
‘I believe the tide is turning,’ she said.
‘Coppers,’ someone near me shouted. ‘Clear away.’
The woman disappeared back into the house and dropped the open sash window with a thud. The crowd melted away in seconds, leaving me lurking in the alleyway next to the back gate of my old house. I’d been so gripped by the woman’s words I’d not even registered where I was standing. There were shouts from the street ahead and I saw a policeman run past. I frowned. What did they care if some women gathered together to share their thoughts? I wondered. Why were they so scared?
In front of me, the gate to the house opposite opened and the woman who’d been speaking peered out. She was elegant and well dressed and looked nothing like the sort of person who should be hiding from the long arm of the law.
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘The police are on the main road.’
She smiled at me, but as she stepped into the alleyway we heard a man shout: ‘These houses have back gates. Check down the alley.’
Her eyes met mine and without thinking I, Esther Watkins, who’d never done a thing wrong in my whole life, reached behind me and opened the gate to my old house.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘There’s a shed. The coppers won’t look there.’
She paused for a second, obviously sizing me up, then having decided she could trust me, she darted across the alleyway and into my old back garden. I’d played so many games here as a child it was strange to be back and for a second I felt dizzy as the memories flooded into my mind.
I sent up a prayer thanking God it was cold and drizzly and the children of the house were warm inside and not playing on the lawn, and I hurried the woman along the edge of the garden and into the potting shed.
She’d taken off her gloves and hat and shaken her head.
‘I thought I was a goner there,’ she’d said. ‘Thank you.’ She stuck her hand out for me to shake. ‘I’m Christabel Pankhurst,’ she said.
And that was the beginning.
Now, standing in the shadow of my old family home, I felt suddenly more positive. The suffragettes were a sisterhood, I thought. The Women’s Social and Political Union – the proper name for the group of women who’d become the suffragettes – was led by Mrs Pankhurst and her daughters. We were all family as they were. The suffragettes were the reason I’d gone to jail, and the reason I’d lost my job, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt they would help me now.
With new-found energy, I lifted my chin and strode out on to the main street. I’d find Mrs Pankhurst, I thought. She’d know what to do.
The only problem I had was that I wasn’t completely sure where Mrs Pankhurst lived, or where I could find her. I had an inkling she was based in East London but I had no real idea where and I didn’t fancy wandering the streets until I stumbled upon a suffragette. Chewing my lip, I gazed up at the houses and tried to remember which window I’d seen Christabel speaking from. Could I knock there and ask if the occupants knew where I could find Mrs Pankhurst? They had to be sympathetic if they’d allowed her daughter to make a speech from their house. But I wasn’t completely sure which of the identical sashes it had been – nor which window belonged to which house.
Unsure and nervous about intruding, I decided instead that I would head to Kennington. I’d been to several meetings at a house there, where a very active suffragette lived. I’d knock there and ask for directions to Mrs Pankhurst’s house.
I glanced back over my shoulder at the home I’d grown up in. That life was all gone now. I may have been thrown out on to the streets by own mother and lost my job but I was part of something. Something bigger than just me …
‘OOF!’
I gasped as the ground came up to meet me and all the air was pushed out of my lungs. I’d tripped over something and now I was sprawled face down on the pavement, the contents of my carpetbag scattered across the stones in front of me and to the side and no doubt behind me too.
Carefully, I pushed myself up to sitting. My cheekbone was grazed and my nose was bleeding.
‘Oh, blimey,’ I said. ‘What now, Esther?’
A man, hurrying along, stepped over my legs without looking down at me and then trod, with his mucky boots, on one of my underskirts that was lying in an undignified heap on the ground.
I opened my mouth to shout at him but instead of angry words, all that came out was a sob. And once one sob had been released, I found I was powerless to stop the others. I sat on the pavement outside my former family home, bloodied and bruised, with my belongings strewn into the gutter, and I cried.
‘Need a hand?’
I looked up, sniffing loudly. A young man stood there, his arm outstretched to help me. I grasped his hand and stood up, wincing as I did so. My cheek was sore and so, I discovered, was my arm.
‘What happened, Miss?’
‘I tripped, I think,’ I said, putting my fingers to my nose to see if it was still bleeding. ‘I fell and my bag split.’
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to me.
‘For your nose,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick everything up.’
‘Thank you.’ I was grateful to him for coming to my aid and for the handkerchief, which seemed to have stopped the bleeding.
He scooped up my dresses, and a book that was in the gutter, and helped me put them all back in my bag.
‘I’ll let you get those bits,’ he said, gesturing with his head towards my underwear and avoiding my eye.
Quickly, I gathered them up and stuffed them in too. ‘If I hold my bag in my arms, nothing can fall out,’ I said.
He smiled at me. He was rather nice-looking, I thought, with dark blond hair falling over his forehead and a mischievous glint in his eye.
‘Very enterprising,’ he said.
‘I try my best.’
‘Where are you off to?’ the young man asked. ‘I’m just on my way to Lambeth Police Station. If you’re going that way, I can walk with you. Make sure you don’t come a cropper on the way.’
My stomach twisted in alarm. ‘The police station,’ I said, trying to sound light-hearted. ‘Are you in trouble?’
‘Good Lord, no,’ he said, raising his eyebrows high on his forehead. ‘No, I’m a constable.’
He sounded proud and I forced myself to smile.
‘How nice. No uniform?’
‘I’m not officially working today, and actually, I’m based over in Whitechapel usually, but I have to pop in.’
‘I’m going the other way,’ I said hurriedly, though the quickest route to the house I was planning to visit would take me straight past the police station.
‘Then I’m afraid I have to say farewell,’ the man said.
‘Thank you for helping me. Someone stepped over me, before you stopped.’
‘I can well believe it.’
He grinned at me again and I felt a tiny curl of interest in my lower belly.
‘I’m Joseph,’ he said. ‘Joseph Fairbanks.’
‘I’m Esther W …’ I stopped myself just before I told this eager young constable my real name – the name that appeared on my criminal record – and pretended to dab my nose again while I desperately looked round me for inspiration. My eyes fell on the painted bricks of the house opposite. ‘Esther Whitehouse,’ I said.
‘It’s very nice to meet you,’ Miss Whitehouse,’ he said. ‘I hope our paths will cross again one day.’
‘Likewise,’ I said politely, though inside I felt uncomfortable. How awkward it would be for him to find out the young woman he’d helped was fresh from jail and an enthusiastic suffragette? I wouldn’t want to put him in that position. No, I thought, it would be easier for everyone if I never saw Joseph Fairbanks again.
Chapter 7
Lizzie
September 2019
The first big event of the school year was, I discovered, the Elm Heath harvest festival. This was all new to me. At my last school our harvest festival had been pretty low-key. We’d sing about ploughing the fields and scattering, and the parents would send their kids in with a donation for a local foodbank.
But at Elm Heath, it was a Big Deal.
‘We’re a farming community,’ Paula explained. ‘At least we were. Things have changed a lot but there are still pupils who live on farms. It’s an important part of life in Elm Heath.’
I nodded.
‘Sounds interesting,’ I said. ‘What happens?’
What happened, I discovered, was the school ran the whole show, apart from the traditional thanksgiving service at the church. Elm Heath Primary was the focus for a week of festivities. There was scarecrow making, and a corn-dolly workshop – I didn’t know exactly what a corn dolly was but I didn’t tell Paula. I thought I’d just google it later. There was a concert with folk dancing, which the kids then performed at the nearby care home for elderly people. And there was a country fair at the weekend, in the school playground, where locals would sell produce and crafts. It all sounded very wholesome, and a million miles from Clapham.
‘It’s a lot of work,’ Paula said apologetically. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t mention it before now.’
‘It’s fine, honestly.’
I was actually quite pleased to have more to fill the hours when I wasn’t at school. Though I was enjoying being back in the swing of school life – more so than I’d anticipated, truth be told – I was finding life on my own to be, well … a challenge.
More than once I’d thought about calling Grant and changed my mind. I didn’t want to open that can of worms, not after the way his flowers had unsettled me. I didn’t miss him exactly. It just felt odd doing this all by myself. When I had been head at Broadway Common Infants, Grant was just across the field in the junior school ready to offer advice (and opinions) whenever I needed. I’d never been in charge alone before. And, of course, I was going home from school to my little cottage, which was cute and homely – if not really to my taste – but echoed with emptiness. I was lonely; that was the truth.
* * *
So for the next couple of weeks, I threw myself into organising the concert. I found songs that even the littlest reception child could sing, and worked out cool dance routines for the sulkiest of the year-six boys. Considering we’d only had a short while to sort it all out, it was a triumph. They performed for their parents, and for the elderly residents at the care home, and on a makeshift stage at the country fair on the Saturday.
‘Are you crying, Miss Armstrong?’ Cara Kinsella, who was dressed as a corn-on-the-cob with yellow tights, a yellow T-shirt and her face painted to match, eyed me suspiciously.
‘Noooo,’ I said, subtly wiping away a small tear. The kids had all worked so hard and it had been lovely.
‘Maybe you have hay fever,’ she said helpfully. ‘Daddy has hay fever.’
‘That’s probably it,’ I said.
‘Do you want a toffee apple? My grandma has been making them.’
She took my hand and dragged me through the throngs of people in the playground. There were all sorts of stalls, selling jams, bread, vegetables, sweets and even a few Christmas decorations though it was only late September.
‘Here,’ she said in triumph depositing me in front of a stand with brightly coloured bunting. ‘My grandma.’
Cara’s grandma was the woman I’d seen dropping her off on the first day of term. Up close, she was elegant with chic greying hair, wearing a simple shift dress. She smiled at me.
‘You must be Miss Armstrong.’
‘I am,’ I agreed. ‘Are you really Cara’s grandma?’
‘I’m Sophie Albert,’ she said in a voice that had the faintest hint of a French accent.
‘Grandma is my mummy’s mummy,’ Cara explained. ‘That’s what a grandma is. Grandma, can Miss Armstrong have a toffee apple?’
‘Of course.’
She handed me an apple covered in thick red toffee and wrapped in cellophane and waved away my attempts to pay.
‘Please, we’re friends now,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’
She nodded at the chair next to her. ‘Sit down,’ she said and obediently I did, feeling suddenly very weary.
‘You must be tired after organising that wonderful performance.’ She smiled at Cara who bounced up and down on her yellow feet.
‘Did you like my bit, Grandma? When I said about looking after the trees?’
‘I loved it.’
Cara saw one of her friends across the playground and darted off to speak to him while Sophie sat down next to me.
‘She has a lot of energy.’
‘She’s wonderful.’
‘So like her mother was at that age – it fills me with joy even as it breaks my heart.’
Remembering what Cara had said about her mummy being dead, I wasn’t sure what to say so I just gave what I hoped was a sympathetic smile.
Sophie looked distant for a second, then she focused on me again.
‘We are all very excited to have you here,’ she said. ‘Do you think they will close this school?’
I was disarmed by her way of saying exactly what she thought.
‘Erm,’ I began. ‘I’m not sure …’
She waved her hand. ‘But things are going wrong,’ she said. ‘Look how few children are here now. Look how they all go in their cars to the fancy school in Blyton.’
‘Well, yes, but …’
Sophie took my hand. ‘My husband went to this school, and so did my daughter,’ she said to me. ‘And now my granddaughter. And ask anyone here, they will tell you the same.’ She gestured with her arm, taking in the whole school, and maybe even the village. ‘Imagine if we didn’t have this,’ she said.
I shifted on my deckchair and gave the rows of toffee apples my attention, instead of Sophie. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything I can do,’ I muttered.
‘Psssht,’ she said. ‘Of course there is.’
‘Is she roping you in to sell toffee apples?’
It was Danny. Despite myself, I sat up a bit straighter wondering if I had mascara smudged beneath my eyes.