Free Park Lane by Frances Osborne Page A

in the house they can’t lay a finger on her.’
    The crowd has become suffocating. Bea has survived more thanher fair share of crushes in houses too small for the numbers invited. This, however, is both more threatening and, well, dammit, more thrilling, even though – or perhaps because – there is no sign of Celeste. The night air is setting in and people are moving from foot to foot as the sway of the crowd pushes them to and fro, shaking the wet-dog smell of damp wool into Bea’s nostrils. She has another go at moving towards the tree but the shoulders in front of her tighten further and a voice growls back, ‘Should have come ealier if you wanted to be up front.’
    Closer to the house, a group of women are starting to chant: ‘Em-mel-ine, Em-mel-ine.’ In front of Bea is a small figure dressed in pale grey, an expensive pale grey. This is not the place to dress up, thinks Bea, and she’s tiny, can’t be more than a girl who should be in bed by now. Christ, she’s getting old to have thoughts like these. Bea, Celeste is right, you really do need to do something with your life. The figure turns to glance behind her and Bea sees, to her astonishment, a flash of pearl earrings, a face that has seen seven decades and a grey gloved hand gripping the handle of an umbrella. What, Bea asks herself, makes all these women come?
    On the dot of eight thirty, a silhouette appears at the lit window and the crowd roars. A small dark figure climbs between the open panes and on to a delicate wrought-iron balcony. It can be barely wide enough for her feet, thinks Bea. The woman stands up, a feathered hat black against the light, like a potentate’s, and extends her hands. The crowd rustles into silence and in the minutes that follow Bea forgets she has lost Celeste, forgets she is alone, and forgets she is surrounded by strangers.
    ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ She hears the sounds coming from her own lips.
    ‘God bless you, Mrs Pankhurst.’ A man’s voice. Well, there are enough of them here, though half of them probably plain-clothes policemen. That is how, Celeste has warned her, some of the police come.
    Then Mrs Pankhurst speaks. A thousand people stare at thesilhouette moving above them, their heads tilted back, chins up. Mrs Pankhurst raises her arms until her hands are level with her shoulders, palms facing her congregation. She will, she says, come down to join them, but first she must tell them what needs to be done. Her voice is clear. It carries over the dark swell of bodies as it declares that, by fighting, women can ‘show to the manhood of this world the kind of stuff we are made of’.
    ‘If,’ Mrs Pankhurst continues, ‘our violence is wrong then the violence of Christ is wrong.’ Then she lists a stream of violent New Testament references. Bea feels herself listening with a single, collective ear that is the crowd drawing in every word of this Christ-like figure who is feeding them, the one thousand, with encouragement alone. ‘Nothing,’ she says, ‘can put down this movement. They may kill us, but they cannot crush this movement.’
    Celeste has told Bea that in prison Mrs Pankhurst hunger-strikes so that she has to be released until she is well enough to be re-arrested, then she moves constantly, her whereabouts secret. It is only when she is out of the country that she can spend more than one night in a single place. Now she is ‘manifesting herself’, thinks Bea, to her disciples. As Mrs Pankhurst speaks of hope and right, and struggle that must shy from no act, whatever the price it takes, exhilaration emanates out through the crowd, passing from touching shoulder to touching shoulder. When it reaches Bea, she finds her lips tingling.
    ‘When your forefathers fought for their liberty, they took lives …’ And then a heckle, another man’s voice, pushed loud. ‘But you are only a woman.’ This is immediately followed by half a dozen other voices telling him to be quiet. Bea feels her shoulders