London - Edward Rutherfurd [562]
This grey December day, as they were looking at the Egyptian mummies and their cases – always a favourite section with the children – Henry asked casually: “Mother, you aren’t going to go on being a Suffragette, are you?”
Violet stared at him blankly. Like many Edwardian parents, she assumed that children remained in a childlike, unquestioning state until they suddenly became adults. She had never discussed her activities even with Henry, except to tell him that women were suffering a great injustice and that she and other brave women were trying to correct it.
Two of her three children believed her implicitly. Little Helen, naturally, wanted to copy her mother in every way, but she had noticed once or twice during the autumn, when her nanny took her to school, that the other nannies had given them strange looks. As for Frederick, too young for Charterhouse, but already boarding away at a preparatory school, the news of his mother’s escapade had hardly reached him. To the eight-year-old boy she was the angel, the kindly vision he dreamed of when he was lonely. But, just as naturally, he hero-worshipped his older brother Henry. If Henry and his mother were in dispute therefore, he closed his mind to the whole subject.
“It depends on what the government does,” Violet answered.
“Well, I wish you’d drop it,” said Henry.
Violet paused. It was so difficult, without her husband, to know how to react to what, she couldn’t help thinking, was a great impertinence. “Your father was very much in favour of votes for women,” she said carefully.
“I dare say!” Henry replied. “But would he have let you run about in the street and harass the Prime Minister?”
This was going too far, especially in front of the other children. “You are not to speak to me like that, Henry!”
“You should hear how they speak to me about you at school,” he said gloomily.
“Then the worse for them,” she said stoutly. “I hope you know that the cause is right.”
“No one else seems to think so,” he remarked bitterly. “Couldn’t you just help them without getting in the newspapers?”
“I am very sorry that you cannot see it is my moral duty to go on,” she replied with dignity. “Perhaps in time you will.”
“I shall never, mother,” he said with equal gravity. It seemed to Violet, as he turned his face away, that some bond between them had suddenly and unexpectedly snapped for ever. Oh, she thought to herself with anguish, if only his father were here to share this burden with me now.
1910
Few of those who buy a West End suit realize that the top half and the bottom have almost certainly been made by different people. When customers came to Tom Brown, their jacket was made by a coat-maker, their vest (English customers called it a waistcoat, though tailors and customers from America still retained the older term of vest) was made by a waistcoat-maker, and their trousers (Americans still said pants, from the pantaloon breeches of the previous era) by a trouser-maker.
Percy Fleming was a trouser-maker and by now he had become very skilled indeed. “I don’t know how you do it,” Mr Brown had remarked to him recently, “but in the last year we haven’t needed to alter a single pair of your trousers, even at the last fitting.” Several other fine establishments could have said the same, and as a result, Percy was making a very good living indeed. Which was a good thing really, because he was planning to get married.
He and Jenny had taken their time. They were both cautious, and as they were able to meet at most once a week, he had never been sure during the first months whether he had even established a friendship. But he had persevered, and by the autumn of the previous year she seemed to have relaxed enough even to suggest a rendezvous herself. “I’ve never been to the zoo,” she had said. “Would you like to go there next week?” Yet it had not prevented her, the following month, claiming that she was