The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [336]
Basil said “It was a fortunate day for me when you came into the Bank. You are too young to be fixed by one setback. You have all your life in front of you. The world in front of you.”
Geraint set his hurt against the pull of the oceans and the strange continent. He could feel his own energy stirring.
“I know,” he said. “You are right. Thank you.”
49
On Derby Day, June 4th, 1913, Herbert “Diamond” Jones rode the King’s horse, Anmer, in his silks with the royal colours. He was a national hero. The huge crowds applauded him. Emily Wilding Davison, wearing a tweed suit, high-collared blouse and unobtrusive hat stood by the rails at Tattenham Corner, where the horses wheeled round, flashing colours against the sky. Inside her sleeve was a flag with the suffragette tricolour, purple, white and green, and another was wrapped round her waist. When the heavy pounding of the hooves was heard, and she saw Anmer leading the galloping herd, she stepped out, in front of the horse, raised her arms, and grabbed at the bridle. They all came down, jockey, horse, screaming woman, on the bloodstained turf. “Diamond” Jones lay still: he was concussed, and his shoulder was hurt. The scene was filmed: Davison can be seen, crumpled and dragged, like a damaged puppet, her skirts awry. Her head was smashed. They wrapped it in a newspaper. She was taken to Epsom Hospital, where her fellows hung her bed like a bier with purple, white and green bunting. She died four days later.
The fallen horse had risen, and cantered away. King George wrote in his diary “Poor Herbert Jones and Anmer were sent flying. It was a most disappointing day.”
Queen Mary sent Jones a telegram, commiserating with him after his “sad accident caused through the abominable conduct of a brutal, lunatic woman.”
Jones said, much later, that he was “haunted by that woman’s face.” He had little success on the racecourse after this event.
Emily Davison was buried with ceremony by the WSPU. There were ten brass bands and six thousand marching women. They carried purple silk banners embroidered with Joan of Arc’s last words: “Fight on, and God will give the Victory.” Davison’s flag, stained with grass, mud and blood, was retrieved and became a relic. Some men, and some women, threw bricks at the coffin. Hedda Wellwood, who had sat up late at night embroidering and hemming the banners, marched with the women, and turned a white face, full of contempt, towards the hecklers. Her feet kept time, the music held the women together, they were a creature with a purpose.
The group held her: the strangeness of all this wild, inventive, dangerous activity by creatures who were expected to be docile, timid, domestic and loving. Hedda as a child had been a rebel. She had stood outside groups—the Wellwood family, girls at school, Fabians. She subverted structures, she found out awkward truths. She could not find a purpose. And then she found it in a community of rebels, an army with a cause, and a programme of destruction. She enjoyed marching, hip to hip, skirt to skirt, shoulder to shoulder with women who had subdued their own needs and movements to a larger cause. Group life held and perturbed her, for she was naturally claustrophobic. Every now and then she thought they would crowd and crush her, like the Red and White Queens and the flying jury in Alice.
An army needs a general, as well as a martyr. Emmeline Pankhurst was now fragile with suffering through hunger-strikes and force-feedings. When the campaign of increasing violence induced the press to report that she was a wicked old woman, she replied “We do not intend you should be pleased.” Yet the army was increasingly, and paradoxically, directed by pretty Christabel, tending her pretty dog in her pretty apartment in Paris, arguing that a leader must remain safe, and out of custody, to plan strategy. Like many absolute leaders, she quarrelled with people, with the Pethick-Lawrences, Frederick and Emmeline, who had paid, planned and suffered for the women’s cause, with