Free Octavia by Beryl Kingston Page B

hard to predict what anyone would say. Luckily it was only her father who was at home to greet her that evening. Amy was still at her sister’s ‘discussing menus or some such’. And her father approved.
    ‘Capital,’ he said. ‘I can just see you carrying the banner, you and young Betty. Will Gwen be going too?’
    ‘I don’t know yet,’ Octavia had to admit. ‘She’s on late shift this week so she wasn’t there and we’ve only just sent out the letters. I expect so, though.’
    ‘Well, you’re sensible girls,’ J-J said. ‘You won’t do anything foolish.’
    And that, rather surprisingly, was her mother’s opinion too, although she added a proviso. ‘If anything untoward were to happen you must promise me you would get out of the way of it at once.’
    It was a promise easily given. For after all what could possibly go wrong when there were going to be so many of them and they would all be together to support one another?
     
    The morning of the demonstration was cold and overcast, threatening rain, and as she dressed for this first public test of her affiliation, Octavia was tremulous with nerves. Ever since she’d joined the WSPU and had that silly quarrel with Em – oh, how she regretted that quarrel! – she’d made a point of reading every newspaper article about the suffragettes that she could find and she’d been appalled at the level of prejudice she’d discovered, especially in the cartoons that all depicted campaigning women as ugly and deformed. So she’d given a lot of thought to what she would wear, knowing how important appearances could be.
    She’d chosen her dove grey costume and the prettiest blouse she possessed and had topped them off with a brand new, far too expensive hat, dove grey to match the costume and loaded with artificial fruit and flowers. Even though it was probably immodest to say so, she was pleased with the image she presented, and glad that Betty and Gwen were equally prettily dressed. The three of them strolled into Euston like visitingroyalty, using their umbrellas as walking sticks and gathering admiring glances.
    But the journey increased her nervousness with every mile. Her two friends gossiped and giggled and didn’t seem at all perturbed by what was ahead of them, but Octavia rehearsed every possibility in her mind and the possibilities grew more alarming the nearer they got to their destination. What if they were arrested? Would she know how to behave if they were? What if there were fisticuffs? Or if she were hit by a truncheon? How would she cope with that? And the wheels sang a mocking accompaniment as they rattled along the rails. ‘What if you were? What if you were?’ It was quite a relief to hear the brakes take hold and to know that they’d arrived.

CHAPTER SIX
    Manchester was an extremely dirty place and a very noisy one. Octavia was horrified by how black and tall the buildings were, and how roughly people were pushing past each other on the pavements. She felt she was walking in a chasm in a foreign land. After a while she noticed that she and her friends were not the only well-dressed women in the street and realised that all of them were walking in the same direction, and then she knew that this was going to be a very big demonstration and began to feel glad that she was part of it. Then they turned a corner and there were the placards saying, ‘Votes for women’ in large bold letters and the familiar banner with its familiar legend, ‘Deeds not words’, swelling in the breeze and making a noise like the crack of a whip and she felt she was in familiar territory. Standing directly and loudly in front of the banner was a brass band, tuning up, and behind it there were rows and rows of women waiting in line, filling the square, turning their heads to smile at them as they approached.
    They joined the tail of the procession and introducedthemselves to the women on either side of them, and then they waited, while the column got longer and