Half of the Human Race Page 15

  ‘Not really. I liked all kinds of sports as a boy – football, tennis, swimming. Cricket just happened to be the one I was best at. I turned pro when I was eighteen.’

  ‘You must still enjoy it,’ said Connie, not sure whether she was asking or encouraging. Tam gazed ahead, and gave a helpless little grimace.

  ‘P’raps. But I’ve no choice in the matter. There’s nothing else I can do.’

  Connie decided not to enquire about his plans for retirement. She looked about the room, and said, ‘Have you seen Will?’

  ‘I left him talking to some fancy-looking types. We could go and look for him,’ he said, proffering his arm, which Connie gladly took. As they moved on she noticed one or two of the older men glance at Tam, as if wondering where they might have seen him before. On their way down the balustraded staircase Connie passed within inches of the woman in the white feather boa, whose face, at this different angle, she now recognised. The woman looked right through her.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ called Brigstock, detaching himself from a group of well-wishers. He was dressed in a rakish velvet frock coat Connie had not seen before. He took her gloved hand and raised it to his lips.

  ‘Hullo,’ she smiled, inclining her head. ‘Allow me to introduce Mr Tamburlain. This is Denton Brigstock.’ As the two men shook hands, Connie saw Brigstock’s face stiffen with surprise – the first time she could recall such an expression on it.

  ‘Andrew Tamburlain? The cricketer?’ Tam nodded, and Brigstock blinked furiously, as though his eyes were playing tricks. ‘I’m deeply honoured, sir. I had no inkling our little show would bring in a celebrity.’

  Tam laughed, in a slightly mechanical way that suggested to Connie he was used to such blandishments. ‘I’m honoured to be here,’ he replied. ‘I’ve just been admiring your picture of Miss Callaway.’

  Brigstock’s eyes brightened wickedly as he looked at her. ‘Indeed? And does it also please the lady?’

  Connie raised her eyebrows ambiguously. ‘I’m still reeling from the surprise, to tell the truth – but it seems quite well done.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Brigstock, eyeing her archly, ‘not exactly the hosanna of praise I was hoping for …’

  ‘Give it time,’ interposed Tam, and clinked his glass against Brigstock’s.

  The clamour of the surrounding throng had intensified, and they had to raise their voices to be heard. Connie leaned towards Brigstock and said, ‘That lady wearing the white feather boa – d’you know her?’

  Brigstock shook his head. ‘Ought I to?’

  ‘She’s Meredith Foulkes. You’ve heard of her husband, Greville Foulkes?’

  ‘The MP? The suffragette flogger?’

  ‘The same,’ replied Connie, ‘and his wife cheers him on from the sidelines – heaven knows why.’

  Brigstock shrugged. ‘Perhaps in the privacy of the marital chamber she enjoys a spot of flagellation herself.’

  At that moment, Will was approaching from the across the room. He had been watching Connie and Tam talk with the frock-coated fellow – an oldish type, who plainly fancied himself a card – and felt rather put out that his latest remark had stirred them to mirth. Connie, still laughing, was now greeting his arrival with a friendly lift of her chin.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Will, aware of his mistimed entrance. ‘I seem to have missed the punchline …’

  Connie shook her head, as if to indicate the unimportance of the joke or, worse, his unfitness to appreciate it. Without waiting to be introduced, Will tried to catch the jocular mood with a sally of his own. ‘Well, I’m not much of an art critic,’ he said, ‘but frankly these paintings are a shambles. Never seen such unfathomable daubs!’

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realised something was wrong, though he couldn’t for the life guess what it might be. Tam had averted his eyes; Connie looked simply appalled. The fellow in the frock coat, however, was grinning at him in undisguised delight. Well, at least he was showing a sense of humour, thought Will, and seeing that neither Connie nor Tam would introduce him, he thrust out his hand.

  ‘How d’you do? I’m Will Maitland.’

  Brigstock, accepting the handshake, replied urbanely, ‘How do you do? I’m …’– he gestured at the walls – ‘an unfathomable dauber.’

  A beat passed, and Will felt an inward chill that manifested itself in a paradoxically warm blush. Ah … He looked away, and stuttered out a few words of apology, but Brigstock had taken his faux pas as a glorious joke.

  ‘Don’t fret, Mr Maitland. I’ve always said – to be great is to be misunderstood.’

  ‘And as you admitted, Blue,’ Tam added drily, ‘you’re not much of an art critic.’

  Will, embarrassed into silence, would like to have withdrawn at this point, but a chafing curiosity about the painter induced him to stay. Judging from their ease in one another’s company, he sensed rather more than acquaintanceship existed between him and Connie. The fellow was old – possibly even older than Tam – but he had austere good looks and an air of chuckling suavity that could find amusement even in a stranger’s affront. Talent, too, allegedly – not that Will could discern it. He had made a chump of himself, and Connie’s reluctance to catch his eye was a merited reproof. As she continued chatting with the two men, Will was reduced to the role of spectator, bow-tied and tongue-tied. He caught the attention of a waiter ferrying about a tray – he could now feel sweat beading on his neck, the night was that warm – and liberated a bottle of wine from him. Meekly, he began to fill their glasses.

  Connie, in fact, was not annoyed with Will. Brigstock had laughed off the insult to his work with characteristic nonchalance – he had seemed genuinely tickled – but it had left Will looking foolish, and she felt for him. She had accepted his offer of more wine and now, out of the corner of her eye, saw him talking to a couple of men who emanated an air of unsmiling self-importance. Then, in an awkward little gavotte, Will shepherded the men forward to be introduced. ‘Would you allow me? – Tam, I think you know Lord Daventry, and this is, um, Mr Greville Foulkes …’

  The name sounded on the air with a convulsive twang, a tiny barometric pressure felt by all but Will, who had not heard of the MP before this evening. Foulkes was a man of about forty, short, stockily built, with tight-curled reddish hair that extended to whiskers; his eyes gleamed marine blue, with a slow, disconcerting droop to the lids. Connie caught Brigstock’s look of suppressed, or perhaps anticipated, hilarity, while Tam, hesitantly polite, had extended his hand. It was Tam they wanted to meet, she could tell, but the proximity of Brigstock and herself now obliged Will to include them in a general introduction.

  ‘… and this is Miss Callaway …’ said Will, still unsuspecting. Foulkes bowed his head briefly in her direction. After a moment’s deliberation she said, in an even voice, ‘I notice you have a cane. Do you find it easier to wield than a horsewhip?’

  Foulkes jerked his head slightly to take a different angle on her. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Well, according to the newspapers, you’ve been encouraging men to horsewhip any woman caught damaging property. I thought you might lead by example.’

  ‘I hardly think this is the time –’ began Daventry, but Foulkes raised a tolerant hand to quieten him.

  ‘Regrettably, Miss –?, we live in a time when decent citizens are under attack from militant elements – who do go out armed. So we must in consequence be prepared to defend ourselves.’

  ‘But I’m confused,’ said Connie. ‘When Nationalist militants in Ireland demand Home Rule, the Liberal Party supports them. Yet when suffragists demand the vote they are thrown into prison and subjected to torture. Can you explain this?’ She sensed around her a shocked bemusement that she was bandying words with him – that a ‘scene’ was being made. Will, she noticed, was frozen to the spot.

  ‘That is quite different,’ replied Foulkes. ‘The women to whom you refer belong to no recognised political party. They are merely a mutinous rabble of individual
s. They have no remit to break windows and destroy property. They are criminals, and deserve to be treated as such.’

  ‘Criminals?’ cried Connie scornfully. ‘What gives you the right to call a woman “criminal” who acts out of the highest ideals of truth and justice?’

  Foulkes was shaking his head in a mime of impatience, as if it were useless to argue with this lunatic firebrand. ‘Young lady,’ he said, ‘if by the “highest ideal” you intend to signify the enfranchisement of women, then I can only think prison is the safest place for you.’

  Daventry chuckled at that. Will, a bystander up to now, was at last moved to speak. ‘I do think this is neither –’ The sentence was left uncompleted, for Connie had taken a step forward and dashed the contents of her wine glass directly into Foulkes’s face. Time hung suspended for a few moments. Nobody could quite take in what had happened: only Connie looked unfazed by the sight of the doused MP, whose incredulous response (‘What in God’s name –’) came out at a volume that turned heads. Deeming her empty glass to be no longer of use, she flung it down where it crashed ecstatically on the tiled floor in front of Daventry, who took a couple of mincing steps back. The noise pushed a little ripple of alarm through the onlookers.

  ‘There’s your broken glass,’ Connie said, invigorated by the noise. ‘Are you going to have me arrested?’

  Foulkes, brushing the drops from his cheeks, advanced on her. ‘Right after I’ve dealt with you –’ he hissed. Connie expected him to strike her, but Tam had stepped protectively across and was warding off her opponent with his pugilist’s bulk. It was convenient that Foulkes reached only to Tam’s armpit in height.

  ‘I don’t think that’s advisable,’ was all Tam said to him.

  Connie heard Daventry mutter to Will, ‘Get that woman out of here, Maitland.’ Will, the colour quite drained from his face, shouldered Connie away through the gawping crowd into a side corridor. Once they had gained a private space, he turned on her a look of mingled outrage and disbelief. She had seen that look before, the night they had first met and she had offered him the benefit of her wisdom on his batting.

  ‘What on earth d’you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I should think it perfectly clear to you what I’m doing,’ she said coolly.

  ‘No. Please explain. All I saw was a chap who’d got on your nerves, so you threw a glass of wine in his face.’

  Connie looked at him pityingly. ‘That “chap” is the most notorious anti in Parliament. He’s also a double-dyed brute who would sooner have women flogged than granted an equal footing with men.’

  This only further exasperated Will. ‘So what if he is? I fail to see how it could possibly justify making a scene like that. One meets all sorts of men one dislikes, but one doesn’t go assaulting them in the middle of a conversation. It’s absurd!’

  ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ said Connie, searching his face. ‘Everything has come so easily to you. The privileges you’ve had, the freedom you’ve had. This isn’t just about being denied a vote. You’ve never known what it is to feel helpless – to feel ignored simply because one isn’t a man.’

  Will stared back at her. Somewhere, buried deep, he could perceive the justice of her words, could even admire the conviction with which she spoke. But he could not square that with the egregious behaviour he had just witnessed. For a long minute they stood there, gazes unmeeting, until they heard approaching footsteps. It was Brigstock, who stopped and looked from one to the other, seeming to take in the strained silence between them. He removed from his pocket a slim cigarette case and held it open for Connie, who took one, and then for Will, who shook his head. ‘I don’t, thanks,’ he murmured, sensing another apology due to the painter, so quickly after the first: this was his night, after all, and it had come unhappily close to being upstaged. Brigstock, however, was blithe about the recent turbulence.

  ‘I think that should get us a mention in the Daily Mail,’ he said brightly.

  Will, at a loss before such urbanity, said, ‘I’m most terribly sorry about this. She didn’t know what she was doing –’

  ‘What?!’ interrupted Connie, not quite believing her ears. ‘What did you say? “She” is right in front of you, if you hadn’t noticed – and I knew exactly what I was doing. How dare you apologise for me? How dare you?’ She was now face to face with Will, so close he could feel tiny flecks of spittle feathering his cheek, an involuntary result of her savagely emphatic consonants. Her eyes flashed with cold fury; she looked even more riled than she had been with the MP. Will was so startled he took a step back. He had been trying to help! In appeal he looked to Brigstock, who had tactfully dropped his gaze, as though reluctant to take sides.

  ‘I seem to …’ Will muttered, and gave up. Farcical to apologise again. He nodded briefly at Brigstock, and with the merest glance at Connie, he walked off. Still fuming, Connie hardly trusted herself to speak.

  ‘May I presume that you’d – like to leave?’ asked Brigstock. She nodded, and he held out his arm for her to take. As they traced their steps back through the gallery’s main room, she kept her eyes to the floor, though her ears picked up stray voices above the conversational hum (‘That’s her’). Then they gained the entrance hall, and left the hive of talk buzzing in their wake. Out on the street, where the soft July night was pulling down shadows, Brigstock sighed and took a drag of his cigarette. He allowed himself an abrupt laugh.

  ‘Well, I know whom to invite next time I want to create a stir.’

  Connie’s lips formed a defiant moue. ‘I could tell you I’m sorry –’

  ‘– but you would be lying,’ he cut in. ‘No need, in any case. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world … though there’s one thing I regret.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He paused for a moment, looking quite wistful. ‘I do wish it had been red wine in that glass of yours.’

  8

  A FEW DAYS later Connie received in the post a note from Brigstock, to which was appended a scrap of newsprint untidily torn from the Mail. His prediction had been correct. Beneath the headline LATEST SUFFRAGETTE ATTACK she read of an incident:

  at the opening night of an exhibition at the Beaufort Gallery in King Street, St James’s. Among the invited guests were Lord Ernest Daventry and the Liberal MP Mr Greville Foulkes, whose implacable stance on the female suffrage question has been widely reported. The MP happened to be in the main hall when he was approached by a militant suffragette. Having cried ‘Votes for women!’ she seized a bottle of wine to discharge over Mr Foulkes’s head and then hurled a glass at Lord Daventry. Neither man was seriously injured. By the time the police arrived the assailant, her identity unknown, had fled.

  Quite the desperado! Brigstock had written in his flowing cursive. Forgot to say at the time, but I was very pleased to meet the ‘Great Tam’ and your other cricketer. Don’t be too hard on the young fellow! DAB. Connie was not inclined to be so forgiving. Each time she recalled Will’s behaviour that evening she felt almost faint with anger. At the lunch with his mother, she had already sensed his unease around mention of the cause, but on that occasion he had been trying to protect her. To have apologised as he did to Brigstock, however, on her behalf – ‘She didn’t know what she was doing’ – the arrogance of it! But then, she considered, it was not so surprising. William Maitland was at heart a conventionally minded fellow, from a conventionally minded class. Not so different from her own class, in truth, only she had been born with some stray gene of independence that had rendered her wholly unsuited to such a man. She would not play the second-rate, subservient creature he expected a woman to be, and she would absolutely not be someone he felt obliged to apologise for.

  Yet the fire of righteous indignation could not wholly cauterise her disappointment. Ever since the encounter at the Savoy back in March there had passed between them a number of those fleeting but unmistakably interested looks that might have been thought to invite – she could not deny it – the possibility of romance.
She had remembered liking his face from the very first time they met. It was hard to reconcile that pleasing countenance with his overweening presumption of superiority.

  Saturday was always lunchtime closing at the bookshop, and once Connie had cashed up and locked up, she hurriedly bent her steps homewards. Fred, her brother, had returned the night before from a sojourn in Italy with college friends, and the two of them had vaguely discussed the idea of going to watch the final day of Gentlemen vs Players at Lord’s. Less than two years her junior, Fred had been the closest companion of Connie’s childhood until he disappeared to public school at the age of thirteen, and thence to Cambridge at eighteen. Their relationship was then limited to visits home in the holidays, when Fred would be his unchangingly agreeable self, but those firm bonds that had existed between them – a shared love of cricket and reading, and his curious brotherly deference towards her – were less easily sustained during his long periods of absence. Fred had inherited his father’s attractive gregariousness, and it ensured that he was a regular house guest on Continental holidays that would have been quite beyond his own means. It took him away for weeks at a time, so the unusual prospect of his staying at Thornhill Crescent for the rest of the summer strengthened Connie’s determination to make the most of it.

  It was Fred’s laughter she heard first on entering the hall, where a huge bouquet of fresh flowers dominated the sideboard. The mid-July temperature, less scorching than the previous summer, had enabled the family to have lunch in the garden, from where the voices were wafting. Discarding her hat and gloves on the way, she sensed from the somewhat heightened volume that they had guests – a surmise which proved correct on her spying Lionel, loud enough for two, through the open French windows. Olivia’s wedding was several weeks away, and as Lionel’s presence in the house became more frequent Connie found that she faced the coming event less with dread than resignation. Taking the quite steep steps into the garden, she saw that the far end of the luncheon table, invisible to her from the doors, was occupied by another pale-suited guest, and for a fraction of a second thought it might be one of Fred’s swarm of ‘chaps’ down from Cambridge. As she approached, the man rose, and his shape startlingly resolved itself into Will. He offered his hand with a shyly hopeful smile.