Free Eden Falls by Jane Sanderson Page B

again? For God’s sake man, will you let ’er be?’
    Amos, struck dumb by his friend’s vehemence, stared at him.
    ‘She’s making a living, and a good one at that,’ Enoch said, more calmly. ‘Let ’er get on wi’ it. You can’t use sheer force o’ will on a woman like Anna.’
    Amos raised an eyebrow and Enoch immediately took his meaning; could hardly miss it. Unmarried, scholarly, dedicated to the party, Enoch was meant to confine his expertise to politics. What did he know about the fairer sex? Bugger all, said Amos’s expression.
    ‘Aye,’ Enoch said. ‘Well, ’appen I’m no authority on women in general. But any fool can see Anna’s ’er own woman. You knew that three years ago, when you wed.’
    She was a grand lass too, he thought: bonny and clever, and younger than Amos by nearly twenty years. He should think himself lucky. If he, Enoch, had been given a chance – even half of one – with a woman like Anna, he wouldn’t have spent any time grousing about her. He stared into his pint for a moment, thinking about loneliness, and the lot of the political agitator. He was younger than Amos by a couple of years, but he looked older. His lungs were bad after twenty years in the pits, and the frequent struggles for breath gave him a strained, stooped appearance and a sickly pallor. He no longer thought of romance, though he’d once exchanged letters with a fellow Fabian from Lytham; for a time, he had imagined himself attached. But then she had written with news of an engagement, which, she said, ‘made further correspondence impossible’ and he had turned back to his books and pamphlets with something resembling relief. The episode, while it had lasted, had made him feel vulnerable: waiting for her next letter, worrying that he’d replied too promptly to her last. These anxieties had distracted him from his true path, he had told himself; a solitary life suited him best, and was necessary to his particular brand of political commitment. That was fifteen years ago and, for the most part, he believed it. He knew, though, that if fate had delivered him an Anna Rabinovich, he would have felt himself blessed.
    He looked up at Amos, who was looking down. ‘Anyroad,’ Enoch said, returning to the theme, ‘she’s not doing any o’ them lords and ladies a favour, is she? They’re all paying through t’nose, from what I’ve ’eard.’
    ‘It’s talked about, then,’ Amos said, as if Enoch had just delivered a terminal diagnosis.
    Enoch made a gesture of irritation. ‘Not so you’d notice. Believe it or not, t’Labour Party ’as more to worry about than where your money comes from.’
    This was blindingly obvious. From within and without, the party was under attack. Victor Grayson, a young firebrand MP from the Colne Valley, seemed hell-bent on bringing down the old guard with public denunciations of their class treachery and lily-livered policies. Meanwhile, the new Liberals were stealing all Labour’s best lines; last year they’d announced an old-age pension provision and this year Lloyd George had gone for the jugular of the landed aristocracy in his People’s Budget, proposing taxes on the rich that even Robin Hood might think a bit steep. It was hard for Labour to hang on to its identity when the Liberals were redistributing wealth and taking on the House of Lords, so Amos knew well enough that the source of his wife’s wealth was the last of his party’s problems, but still.
    ‘Anyroad,’ Enoch said, ‘Ramsay MacDonald makes no secret that it’s ’is wife’s money they live off.’
    Amos gave a grim laugh. ‘Margaret MacDonald does more Good Works than your average saint. She ’as no time to rub shoulders wi’ aristocracy. There’s trade schools to set up, and t’Women’s Labour League to run. If she paid for MacDonald to bathe in champagne, nob’dy would call her to account.’
    Enoch made a discreet shushing motion: a brush of his finger against his lips. Walls had