London - Edward Rutherfurd [569]
“Maybe,” he said, “I can persuade you to change your mind.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t think we ought to meet for a while.”
“Well,” he began, “we can still . . .”
“Percy,” she cut him short quite sharply with a little show of cruel impatience that she had been practising in her mind for days. “I don’t want to marry you, Percy. I never did and I never shall. I’m sorry.” And before he knew what was happening, she walked out.
She walked quickly back towards Tower Bridge. She was just about halfway across when she noticed that a ship was approaching from upstream and that the bridge was about to open. She was already hurrying down the northern side when she thought she heard a cry, far behind her.
Percy had been running. For a moment or two he had been so stunned in the shop that he had forgotten to pay for the tea and had been called back. Then he had run as fast as he could back towards Tower Bridge. He saw her from the approach road, cried out, “Jenny!” and was just running out on to the great bascules when a burly policeman stopped him.
“Sorry, you can’t go now, lad,” he said. “Bridge is up.” And as he spoke, Percy saw the road ahead begin to tilt before his eyes as Arnold Silversleeves’s mighty mechanism went smoothly into operation.
The raising of Tower Bridge was an awesome sight. It happened about twenty times a day. To Percy it seemed as if the road before him rising up like a huge, hundred-foot wall blocking out the light, severed him with majestic finality from the one he loved.
“I’ve got to cross now!” he shouted foolishly.
“Only one way to do it, son,” the policeman said, and pointed up to the walkway which ran along the top. With a cry of anguish Percy ran towards the nearby southern tower.
He ran, panting and puffing, up the two hundred steps and more. Gasping he raced across the iron walkway that seemed to stretch before him like an endless, iron tunnel. Then he charged down the iron staircase in the northern tower to the other roadway.
There was no sign of Jenny. She had simply vanished. There was only the grim, old Tower of London behind the trees on the left, and on the right, the silent grey waters of the Thames.
Percy wrote to Jenny three times after that. None of the letters was answered. Maisie introduced him to another girl, but nothing came of that. As he looked out from his window to the faraway ridges across London, he still felt mournful.
1911
Helen Meredith had never felt so excited in all her life. Of course, she was used to being smartly dressed. Like most girls of her class, she was expected to put on a coat and white gloves even for a walk in Hyde Park. She was a child, to be dressed and treated accordingly. But not today. As she gazed at herself in the glass in her long white dress, with her sash of purple, white and green, she felt so proud: she was dressed exactly the same as Mummy. And they were going to march together, side by side in the Women’s Coronation Procession.
The Edwardian era, though unforgettable, had only lasted a decade. Already well into an over-indulged middle age when his mother, old Queen Victoria died, King Edward VII had been showing signs of being unwell for some time, and his death the previous year had not been entirely unexpected. Now, after a suitable period of mourning, his son George V – correct, monogamous and dutiful – was to enjoy his coronation with his devoted wife Mary.
On Saturday 17 June, the weekend before the royal event, the Suffragette movement had decided to hold a coronation procession of their own. It was going to be huge.
There was no question that in the last three years, the Suffragette movement had made astonishing advances. Some of the tactics of its members had seemed outrageous, some rather cunning. Their ploy of chaining themselves to railings in public places, for instance, not only brought publicity, but allowed them to make lengthy and well-prepared speeches while the police had to saw