The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [174]
“She works out her own freedom, and is able to dance barefoot,” said Methley. “She learns to live.”
Elsie did not ask who would teach the barefoot girl. She made a remark about the view across the Marsh, and the larks singing. Methley followed her lead, and they sauntered on, demonstrating great interest in wild flowers and marsh sheep, in windblown trees and the Royal Military Canal, along whose deliberately designed bank they walked for some way. Methley turned off the road before it turned towards the drive to Purchase Hall. Elsie thanked him, with some constraint, for his help and for the belt. He said “I think you should come to a public meeting about the rights of women that Miss Dace is organising in Lydd. I think you should take an interest. Women’s lives are about to change utterly. You—you yourself—need to think about that.”
Elsie said she would need to think about whether it could be managed.
“My wife and I will be there. You would be among friends.”
“I shall need to ask,” Elsie said, already a little mutinous at having to ask Seraphita for anything.
“Maybe Mrs. Fludd would also consider coming? We need to speak to all women.”
Elsie did not know how greatly Seraphita Fludd feared that Elsie herself would leave as suddenly and mysteriously as she had come.
25
Miss Dace had booked a kind of glorified wooden hut, in Lydd, known vaguely as the Club Hall, though it did not belong exclusively to any particular club. The army used it, for lectures and social events. The Chapel used it for bring and buy sales. The University Extension Lecturers used it in the evenings, for workers’ education. Miss Dace had put up posters advertising a full day of discussions on the general theme of “The Woman of the Future.” There were five speakers, beginning with Miss Dace herself, and ending with Herbert Methley. There was always the risk that the number of the audience would only equal the number of speakers. Miss Dace enticed the Theosophists and the sewing circle with promises of a very good cold lunch to break the day. She spoke to a major’s wife who was a Theosophist, and asked her to encourage other wives to come. The colonel’s wife was known to be a vehement Anti-Suffragist. She might even come—or send a minion—to heckle. The Vicar of All Saints in Lydd could not be expected to come, though some independent women from his congregation might do so. Frank Mallett and Arthur Dobbin would come, because they were good disciples of Edward Carpenter, and because one of the speakers was the schoolmistress at Puxty, Mrs. Marian Oakeshott.
The family at Purchase House were sent a flyleaf. Seraphita put it listlessly down on the kitchen table. Elsie said, slightly too firmly, “I should like to go to that, if that’s all right.”
Seraphita put her head on one side and looked as though she was considering objections, with difficulty.
“Do you think you will go?” Elsie asked Seraphita.
“Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t believe in all this agitation about votes, which is what I suppose it’s about. I don’t see how votes could change anything important. Women are … women must…”
She left most such sentences trailing unfinished.
“I will go with you,” said Pomona. “It will make a change of scene.” She yawned, prettily. Elsie was briefly annoyed. She had wanted to do something on her own. But Pomona was right—she did most desperately need a change of scene.
They set out across the Denge Marsh. It was a hot, still morning. Elsie had dressed carefully. She wore a white cotton blouse, her willow-bough skirt, the red belt and the new shoes. She had made herself a hat, on the base of a broken-crowned straw hat retrieved from Frank Mallett’s hand-ons. She had stitched it together, and trimmed it with some ends of red braid, retrieved from Seraphita’s sewing, and a kind of flower-form she had twisted out of bits of lace and gauze. It was the first time she had gone out in public in a hat. Pomona wore a flowing shep-herdessy smock in apple-green, liberally embroidered with butterflies and blossoms. She was hatless. Her pale hair