Page 74 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

‘I’m going to a political meeting tonight in Kingsway,’ Mawes Morris said at luncheon. ‘I want to make some sketches. I wondered if you girls would like to come with me.’

‘Am I included in the “girls”?’ Isabel asked.

‘Of course. What would I do without you?’

‘You’d be bored.’ Isabel laughed. ‘Don’t be deceived, girls – he doesn’t think you’d enjoy it, he only thinks he won’t enjoy it on his own.’

‘Really, Daddy?’ Lepida asked.

‘There are two good speakers,’ he said enticingly.

‘You know the government is split on the subject of free trade? Chamberlain and his faction want to put punitive tariffs on countries that put tariffs on our goods, while Churchill and his gang want total free trade on everything, regardless. It’ll be a ding-dong sparring match. ’

‘And which one do you want to draw?’ Nina asked. She and Lepida had been working on the Free Library scheme, and she had stayed for luncheon.

‘Churchill mostly. He has a distinctive face, better for caricatures than Chamberlain’s, though I shall need both for next week.’

Nina was looking forward to seeing Winston Churchill, whom she had heard described as a ‘rum cove’.

She remembered Richard Tallant speaking about him once, telling how he had been a newspaper correspondent in the war and, having been captured by the Boers, had managed to escape out of a window, then had written the Boer leaders an impudent letter thanking them for their hospitality.

He had recently been elected to Parliament, and was making a name for himself as a speaker.

The hall in Holborn was packed, and they could only get seats near the back, which was not ideal for Mawes.

There weren’t a great many women present, Nina noticed, looking around – just two near the front, and another two further along their own row.

There were some rough-looking men standing at the back, presumably not having been able to secure a seat.

‘Free trade is a popular subject, it seems,’ Nina said to Mawes.

He stared round at the men. ‘I don’t think they’re here for the debate. There’s a certain sort of man who just enjoys heckling. Politics is a rough sport.’

‘What’s “heckling”?’

‘You’ll see,’ he said, settling his pad comfortably on his knee, and rapidly sketching some of the faces around him.

The speeches were serious and impassioned, and Nina found herself swayed one way, then the other.

Both sides seemed to have perfect, logical arguments, and she wondered how anyone could decide between them.

Then the chairman opened the meeting to questions.

A man stood up and asked a question, and those on the platform attempted to answer it, while the rough men behind shouted the occasional comment, and others in the seats turned and shouted back at them.

It was certainly more lively, though perhaps less enlightening than the speeches.

The questions seemed to have petered out when one of the women further along their row stood up, and a sudden hush fell on the hall.

The woman’s voice rang out clearly, her accent pure, her tone the decided one of a person used to public speaking, though she was plainly dressed with a very unemphatic hat. ‘Will Mr Chamberlain tell us whether the government will give the vote to women?’

Someone near the front groaned, someone else said something Nina didn’t catch, and several people around him laughed. The chairman scanned the room. ‘Are there any more questions?’ he said.

‘I have asked a question,’ the woman said.

Someone in the back row shouted, ‘Sit down!’ and the man in the seat immediately behind the woman grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly down.

‘If there are no more questions, I propose we go to the closing speeches,’ the chairman announced.

The woman rose again, and said, ‘Why don’t you answer my question? Will the government give the vote to women?’

Now there were shouts. ‘Sit down!’

‘Be quiet!’

‘Rubbish!’

‘Go home, woman!’

The men at the back were even more frank. ‘Get off, you baggage!’

‘Get back to the kitchen, you trollop!’ And other suggestions less repeatable.

Mawes was sketching as though his life depended on it.

‘Why won’t they answer her question?’ Nina asked him urgently.

‘Women aren’t allowed to speak at political meetings,’ he told her, his eyes flashing up and then down, his fingers busy. Nina saw he was drawing Mr Churchill, whose chin was sunk in his hand, a grim, bulldog-ish look on his face.

The whole room was alive with shouts, harsh laughter and catcalls.

A second woman tried to stand up but was pulled down.

Someone at the back threw something at her – it looked like a balled-up pamphlet – and managed to knock her hat askew.

The first woman rose again, but her voice was drowned out, though Nina, watching her lips, assumed she was asking the same question.

‘It’s so unfair!’ Nina said. ‘Why can’t women speak?’

‘Because we don’t have the vote,’ Isabel said.

‘But they’re asking for the vote,’ Nina said. ‘How can they get it if they’re not allowed to ask?’

Isabel shrugged. ‘Politics is men’s business. You see how rough it is – too rough for women.’

Something was happening: a large man had advanced down the side aisle and was addressing the two women. Word came passing along the line. Mawes said, ‘Apparently the chairman has said they must submit their question in written form.’

The hall was awash with loud conversation and the occasional burst of laughter.

Nina watched as the steward accepted a piece of folded paper from the women and walked back down to the platform, where he delivered it to the chairman.

The chairman unfolded it, read it, then screwed it up and threw it onto the floor behind him.

The talk roared up in cheers and laughter.

‘That’ll teach ’em!’

‘Go home where you belong!’

The two women stood up together, and in chorus began to shout, ‘Votes for women!’

And now the back of the hall erupted. The women were grabbed.

They struggled, and fighting broke out behind them, with oaths to turn the air blue.

Stewards ran down the aisle again, someone fetched in the policeman from the door outside, and the women were dragged bodily away, still shouting, their words quite unheard in the din.

One had her hat knocked off, and her hair half pulled down; the other’s sleeve was torn almost from her coat, and Nina could see even from this distance that there was a bruise on the side of her face.

‘What will happen to them?’ she asked Mawes anxiously. ‘Those men will hurt them! Can’t we do something?’

‘There’ll be more policemen outside,’ Mawes said, still drawing madly. ‘They’ll stop them being badly hurt. They’ll be arrested and taken to the police station.’

‘Arrested for what?’ Nina asked. ‘They weren’t the ones causing the trouble.’

‘Breach of the peace, probably. Or obstruction,’ said Mawes. ‘That’s what they usually get charged with.’

‘But it’s not fair !’ Nina cried again. ‘They only wanted to ask a question.’

He looked at her with a faint smile. ‘Very little in life is fair, Nina my dear.’ He flipped his pad closed. ‘Shall we try to leave, before the mob gets moving?’

‘But why can’t women have the vote?’ Nina asked.

‘Oh dear,’ said Isabel, ‘that’s such a large question. Most women don’t want to vote, you know. They don’t understand politics and they’re happy to leave it to their husbands.’

‘You mean,’ said Lepida, ‘that it’s a man’s club and the men don’t want to let women in. They want to keep all the fun for themselves.’

‘It didn’t look much like fun in there,’ Nina said.

‘Exactly,’ said Mawes. ‘It’s a rough business, and any decent man would want to keep the women he loves out of it. And there’s another reason, of course,’ he added.

‘What’s that?’ Nina asked.

‘There are actually more women than men in the country,’ said Mawes. ‘So if they had the vote, they’d outvote us every time. What man could accept that?’

Lady Stainton’s eyes flashed, her nostrils flared. ‘Absolutely not!’ she said.

Kitty wilted. It had taken her a long time to pluck up the courage to speak to her mother-in-law about making a communicating door, and the courage was too newly found to stand up to opposition, particularly when generated by centuries of privilege and a lifetime of being in the right. ‘I – I’m sorry.’ she stammered.

‘Staintons have lived here for hundreds of years,’ said Lady Stainton, icily. ‘Yet what they have always found satisfactory, you have the temerity to object to. A girl barely out of the schoolroom! Not here five minutes and you want to tear the house down around our ears.’

‘Oh, no, it’s a lovely house,’ Kitty faltered. ‘I only thought—’

‘You did not think at all, that’s the trouble,’ said Lady Stainton. ‘I suggest you have the modesty to wait a few years before you begin dictating to your elders and betters.’

‘But—’

‘I will hear no more about it,’ Lady Stainton said, and left the room, ending any possibility of argument.

There was a derelict barn over the crown of the hill, behind the woods, its roof too much fallen in to be useful for storage.

As Rachel rode up to it, Victor came out, and stood waiting for her.

He caught the rein, and Daystar threw up his head, knowing an inexperienced hand when he felt one.

Rachel wished Victor wouldn’t do it, but she knew he thought he was being helpful.

She halted, untangled her leg, and let him jump her down.

‘No-one about,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen anyone since I started up the hill.’