Half of the Human Race Read online

  Lily, half turning, asked in an undertone as to her meaning.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve heard of Greville Foulkes.’ She had named a Liberal backbencher who had gained notoriety as one of Parliament’s most vociferous anti-suffragists.

  ‘He’s a scoundrel,’ said Lily, with feeling.

  ‘True enough,’ agreed Marianne. ‘I gather he is preparing a motion that any homeowner who catches a woman damaging his property should be entitled to horsewhip her.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’m afraid so. That lady is his wife, Meredith – and hardly less poisonous in her views than he is.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘We’ve exchanged … unpleasantries. My husband works at the Foreign Office, so we move in similar circles. She introduced herself one evening, and thereafter became inescapable.’

  Connie peered across the room to where Mrs Foulkes was engaged with a company of superior-looking ladies. From her frequent tirades on behalf of the National Anti-Suffrage League, as reported in The Times, one might have imagined her to be kin of Wilde’s Lady Bracknell – ‘a monster without being a myth’. But the lady in question was not much older than thirty, elegantly attired and altogether more human-looking than Connie had envisaged. She turned to Marianne.

  ‘It’s rather confounding – she really doesn’t look … the type.’

  ‘The whole idea of an Anti-Suffrage League is confounding,’ replied Marianne, ‘not to say ridiculous. What’s to be done about women who start a political campaign that aims to exclude their sisters from politics?’

  ‘Perhaps she can answer that question herself,’ murmured Connie, directing her eyes at the woman approaching their table, and then back to Marianne. This ought to be interesting, she thought.

  ‘Mrs Garnett,’ said Meredith Foulkes, canting her head very slightly. Marianne responded with a smile that did not reach to her eyes. Two prizefighters waiting for the bell to ring might have put more warmth into a greeting.

  ‘I see your Conciliation Bill has run into trouble,’ said Mrs Foulkes with a distant smirk. ‘Should we be prepared for a return to your former tactics?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ Marianne replied coolly. ‘But I’ll be sure to send you notice if we do.’

  Mrs Foulkes glanced at Connie and Lily. ‘I trust you’ve not been filling these young ladies’ heads with subversive ideas.’

  ‘They’re perfectly capable of forming their own ideas. We were educated at the same school.’ Connie felt a surge of pride at this declaration of solidarity, though she kept silent. ‘Be kind enough to tell Mr Foulkes, by the way, that if he takes to carrying a horsewhip in the streets he had better know how to use it.’

  ‘Oh, I think my husband has more important things to do than flogging miscreants.’

  ‘Of course. It would be typical of him to hire others to do his dirty work.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Foulkes, slightly narrowing her gaze, ‘I think if he encountered you he might make a personal exception.’

  Marianne’s eyes flashed wickedly. ‘I’ll be waiting for him – if he dares.’

  Mrs Foulkes offered a slow, ironic nod, and was about to turn away when she looked again at Connie and Lily. ‘Ladies, before I bid you good evening, allow me to advise you – have a care for the society you keep.’ She tilted her chin once more at Marianne, and turned on her heel.

  Lily drew in her breath suddenly. ‘Of all the nerve! “The society you keep” … as if we want her advice!’

  Marianne’s expression was ambiguous as she said, ‘She paid you a sort of compliment, all the same. She sees that you have the right fire.’

  Connie glanced uncertainly at Lily. ‘Fire?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marianne, looking from one to the other. ‘Now that we have started this war, we have to finish it. We face Mrs Foulkes and her “antis” on one side, Miss Gray and her law-abiding sisters on the other, and the government right in the middle. We need you – with all your courage, all your fire – to go forth and rout them.’

  Her voice had dropped low as she spoke, but the gleam in her eye indicated that a challenge was being thrown down, and for the first time that evening Connie wondered if Marianne’s charm and generosity had been merely the smokescreen for a recruiting drive. Disappointment touched its limp hand to her heart. It now seemed that the sentimental ties of their alma mater had been useful rather than important to Marianne, a means of binding them to the cause. She had called them both friends, but would she still if they refused to join up?

  ‘What would you have us do?’ asked Lily.

  ‘You’ll know what you have to do,’ said Marianne simply.

  ‘And go to prison for it?’

  ‘If necessary. But we would go in the satisfaction that our cause is great – the greatest the world has ever known. It is to free half of the human race.’ She let her words hang in the air before adding, ‘May we count on you?’

  They finished talking as the clock on the mantelpiece struck half past midnight. They bid Marianne and her driver goodnight, and watched the car disappear into the fog. For a while Connie and Lily walked in silence, both deep in contemplation, their boots ringing on the Mayfair flagstones. As they approached Oxford Street, they heard the jingle of a tram’s bell, and then saw its length rumble crossways. Connie was trying to order her thoughts, uncertain as to what had been the most revelatory aspect of their evening – it already felt like a memorable one. At length she turned to Lily, muffled up against the cold, and mused, ‘Do you remember how we were all rather in love with her at school?’

  Lily nodded. ‘And d’you know? – I think I still am.’

  Some days later Connie was busy in the stockroom when the youngest assistant, Clara, poked her head round the corner to say that there was ‘a gentleman’ upstairs asking for her. It was likely to be someone from the vast army of publishers’ representatives eager to promote their spring catalogues. Connie had recently taken over as manager of the bookshop after Hignett got wind that the previous incumbent had crossed the line from delegation into downright negligence: Connie, indeed, had been de facto the controlling influence there for several months before her appointment was made official. Now she spent more time inhaling dust from the stacked shelves in the basement, where old stock seemed to have bred in the dark like mushrooms. In all, it felt rather less satisfying than a promotion ought to have done.

  She ascended the winding iron staircase to the shop floor, where the feeble grey light of a November morning was leaking through the mullioned windows. She saw the outline of his back, and when he turned she was surprised by the sight of Brigstock, who had not visited the shop in several months. She had begun to think he had left the country.

  ‘I did leave the country,’ he said. ‘Returned last week. I’ve been in Paris for the last four months, getting through a tremendous amount of work. Sorry, I ought to have written you a card.’

  Connie half smiled at his presumption, touching in its way, that he had been missed. He looked little changed, aside from the flamboyant fur-collared coat and the shading of a feathery beard. A gleam danced in his eyes, though she couldn’t be sure if he favoured every young woman he met in this way. He was now slouching against the sales counter and looking about the shop like a man with time on his hands. Connie coughed lightly, and said, ‘Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?’

  He swung round to face her. ‘Oh, no. I only stopped by to ask if you’d care to hear a little music this evening.’

  ‘The opera?’

  Brigstock laughed. ‘I’m afraid not. They’ve just reopened the music hall round the corner from my digs, and I have a yearning to visit the old place again. What do you say?’

  Connie hardly knew. She had never been to a music hall before, and the idea of it appealed to her. But what message would accepting such an invitation convey to its proposer? She had thought of Brigstock occasionally, but more in wonder at his absence than in some romantic reverie.

/>   ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I close up here at about half past six.’

  ‘Splendid! I shall return for you then. We’ll dine before the show begins.’ He doffed his homburg in genteel fashion, and with a sidelong glance at young Clara, who had been gawping, he strolled out. When he had disappeared from view, Clara sidled up to Connie and said, in a conspiratorial undertone, ‘He’s got a lot smarter since he was last here.’

  At the appointed hour Brigstock tapped at the shop’s glass-fronted door. Connie, who had just finished cashing up for the day, clapped shut her accounts ledger, locked her desk and, with a brief nod through the window, signalled to him that she would be one minute. She had retrieved her coat and hat from the office downstairs when she glimpsed herself in the spotted looking glass at the staircase turn. She quickly fixed her hair before going up to join him.

  The lamplighters had just visited the narrow lane where the bookshop stood, illumining the night with a dingy glare. Brigstock led her a little way up Camden High Street before halting outside an eating house. It was a place patronised in the main by office clerks, nightwatchmen, lowly journalists and the like. The hot breath of boiled meats wafted through an open window. Brigstock directed an enquiring look at Connie.

  ‘It’s not the Café Royal, I grant you, but they serve a decent chop here.’

  ‘If you don’t mind it, I see no reason why I should.’

  They entered a long room divided at intervals by wooden benches and patrolled by waiters in aprons. Voices echoed off the tiled walls, and gas jets flared on their brackets. They took a booth and sat facing one another. Brigstock cast a cursory eye over the menu before discarding it, then looked at Connie.

  ‘I thought of you the other week. I had a letter from an old friend of mine, inviting me to watch him perform an operation.’

  ‘Er … and you thought of me?’

  ‘I should explain. Cluett is a surgeon at the London, and I’ve been at him for a while to let me watch a … procedure. Well, he’s at last agreed to smuggle me into his theatre.’

  ‘Why ever would you wish to see such a thing?’

  ‘Natural morbidity,’ he shrugged. ‘And I have an odd notion that it might make a painting.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘But that’s not my point. I seem to recall a conversation we had some months ago about your own ambitions in that line. I thought that you might care to accompany me.’

  ‘Yes – but medicine is not a career I can afford to think about any longer.’

  Brigstock nodded. ‘Maybe so. But surely it would interest you for its own sake? The opportunity to watch a sawbones – sorry, a surgeon – intimately at work doesn’t happen along too often.’

  Connie paused, considering. ‘It is something that interests me –’

  ‘Well, then! Once I have the lie of the land, I’ll ask Cluett if he’ll allow me to bring a guest.’

  ‘Even if she’s a woman?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a modern sort of fellow.’

  ‘Like yourself,’ she said with a faint smile.

  ‘You know my views on the sexes. Though I must say, these suffragettes are making it a devil of a business to get about town. I’d only just arrived at Victoria the other afternoon, called in at my tailor’s and next thing a stone comes flying through the window. Missed me by inches!’

  ‘Do you deplore such tactics?’

  ‘I did at that moment,’ Brigstock said with a laugh, and then looked thoughtful. ‘The sound of breaking glass is a good way to create a stir in the newspapers. But I’m not sure that sort of thing won’t turn public sympathy against them – or should I say, you?’

  ‘I’ve not been throwing stones, I assure you,’ said Connie. ‘But I did happen to meet Marianne Garnett the other night …’

  ‘Ah. One of the Pankhurst mob. How did you manage that?’

  ‘I’d met her before. We were at school together.’

  ‘Rather a spitfire, isn’t she? I saw a photograph of her in The Times braining some policeman outside Parliament.’

  ‘She’s not the crazed harridan they claim. Only very … determined.’

  ‘I should say!’ cried Brigstock. ‘Hostibus eveniat lenta puella meis.’ Connie looked blank. ‘It’s Propertius – “Let a placid girl be my enemy’s lot.” I do admire a woman with spirit.’

  ‘Marianne Garnett is certainly that.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of Mrs Garnett,’ he replied, his gaze across the table so candid that Connie had to look away.

  They dined on some acceptable chops – Brigstock had got that right – and Connie also forced down half a pint of porter. The bitter, yeasty taste of it was still in her mouth as they headed off to the music hall, its lighted facade gaudily refulgent against the gloom, like an ocean-going liner floating through a black night. The last time Connie had noticed the place it had been masked in scaffolding.

  ‘That’s a sight to gladden the eye,’ said Brigstock. ‘There’s really nothing like an English music hall.’

  In the foyer there rose an expectant clamour that bordered on rowdiness. The evening’s programme had already begun, but from the sound of the laughter and the clink of glasses at the bar it seemed that some had found entertainment enough outside the auditorium. Brigstock led Connie through the crush and up the stairs, the reek of cheap cigars, orange peel and stale beer thick in their nostrils. At the top he handed a ticket to the attendant, who conducted them along a corridor; their destination turned out to be a private box. Connie hoisted her eyebrows in surprise.

  ‘I’d usually go to the gallery,’ he said, raising his voice above the hoots and cat calls that were already raining down from the cheap seats, ‘but I thought it mightn’t be the most agreeable introduction.’

  ‘… Very nice of you,’ she said, almost shouting in his ear. They settled into seats of a slightly grubby crimson plush. Raucous cries and whistles cut the air, and Connie peered over the balcony to discover the cause. A troupe of acrobats were fumbling their way through an act whose want of finesse had provoked the onlookers to loud derision. A minute later they were hurrying off the stage, to everyone’s satisfaction. At her side, Brigstock had pulled loose the ribbon on his portfolio and was fixing a loose leaf onto its boards. As the din from the audience continued, Connie became distracted between what was happening on stage and the spectacle of the gallery opposite, where a sea of faces loomed in and out of the semi-darkness. Some leaned on their elbows, others had propped their feet against the safety rails. Framed beneath by the gilded mouldings of the balcony, and above by plaster cupids, these spectators became a kind of theatre in themselves, pointing, cackling or merely staring for minutes at a time.

  Onstage the acts came and went – a trick cyclist, an illusionist, a pair of mashers, a sword-swallower, another troupe of tumblers – while the crowd responded with desultory applause; nothing really enchanted them, or Brigstock, who barely looked at the entertainment. His eyes roamed over the stalls, the circle, the gallery of shadowed faces overhead, and then dipped back to his sketch. He was quite absorbed. It was flattering, she conceded, that he had sought her company this evening, though she didn’t altogether trust him to behave. She had been flirted with before, when Fred invited ‘chaps’ from college to dinner at Thornhill Crescent. She had even been wooed, briefly, by the son of one of her father’s colleagues in the City, handsome and clever enough, but much too eager to impress. Like other men, Spencer Nairn knew how to talk at her, but not to her. His courtship had proceeded with such confidence that the way in which his face seemed to collapse through stages of mortified con fusion as she politely but unequivocally turned down his proposal was interesting to behold. His retreat from the room felt so piteous that she was half minded to call him back. Wisely, she had not. But she felt much less self-assured when faced with a man to whom she was attracted.

  She looked sidelong at Brigstock, bent over his drawing. His confiding manner – suddenly leaning over to whisper some droll remark in her ear – was
born of someone at ease in the company of women. She liked the feeling of his breath on her neck, and now suspected that his choice of venue this evening was precisely calculated to allow him this liberty. The more closely she pondered it, the more certain became her conviction that he, to some degree, desired her. It was a thrill to realise it, to feel the power of one’s physical allure upon a man. The insult currently hurled at women who campaigned for the vote was ‘unsexed’, a word symptomatic of a vague alarm that masculine authority, in and out of the bedroom, was under threat. Unsexed. She could not imagine Brigstock bandying the word about: had he not declared his partiality to ‘a woman with spirit’? For all his charm, however, she had to concede that he was old, perhaps nearly fifty, and that it would be wrong to encourage his fancies. He was looking at her now, and in his expression she no longer saw mere regard, but hopefulness. She knew that she would have to tread with care – the male ego was a frail thing. The audience had at last risen to enthusiasm at the appearance of a fellow in loud checks. The orchestra accompanied him.

  Now it really is a wery pretty garden

  And Chingford on the eastward can be seen.

  Wiv a ladder and some glasses

  You can see to ’ackney Marshes,

  If it wasn’t for the ’ouses in between.

  Connie looked across at the gallery, at the rows of faces roaring out the words, and as she joined in herself she recognised the song as a favourite of her father’s – she could almost hear him singing it now in his mellifluous tenor. If only she could return home and tell him, ‘Pa, you remember that old song you used to do …’ – she could picture his face beaming at the thought. And there it was again, that needling sensation, whenever his face rose in her memory, of something unresolved, mysterious, in the suddenness of his death. Or was it simply that death was always mysterious?

  Now it really is a wery pretty garden

  And right outside the poplar can be seen.