Free The World is a Wedding by Wendy Jones Page B

tree,
    K-I-S-S-I-N-G
    First comes the love,
    Then comes the marriage,
    Then comes the baby in the baby carriage.’
    Â 
    And, as a small child, she had been taken to the Mothers’ Union where she had played at the feet of matronly ladies with elaborate hair, dressed in milky-white cotton. To her child’s eye, they looked like a circle of wedding cakes: sculptured, moral, firm and ornate. But this, here, was almost a rabble of femininity.
    â€˜Mary Richardson? The Window Smasher? I simply don’t believe it!’ a woman exclaimed. ‘I haven’t seen you since Holloway Prison.’
    â€˜Daphne Brimble!’ the woman Grace had been speaking to replied excitedly.
    Grace glanced around. She had seen what large groups of people—of men—did during the war. And what had been done to them: how they returned—her brother Madoc included—with a disturbed sanity. And a destructive arrogance. She had seen the stupidity of groups and the fantasies they could concoct. Were these women aping men, being called to arms for yet more violence, triumphant and expanded on the fantasy of victory? She had read in the newspaper that Christabel Pankhurst had said the Great War was God’s vengeance upon the people who held women in subjugation. But, as in the War, Grace had no passion for this fight. She didn’t understand what the Suffragettes wanted. What
was
the Representation of the People Act? And what did ‘universal suffrage’ mean? It sounded like universal suffering and rage.
    â€˜Look, there’s Mrs. Garrud.’ The woman with the birthmark tapped Grace. ‘If you’re going to join the Cause, it’s simply essential to learn Suffragettes’ self-defence from Mrs. Garrud. You can’t imagine what brutes the police constabulary can be. Do join us for a lesson. Be at Highbury Corner at three o’clock on a Wednesday . . .’ The woman suddenly leaped up. ‘Sit here. I’ll be back.’
    The hall was filling and Grace was squashed in her seat; the rows of chairs were cramped together and three Alexandra Nurses in uniform, who looked like sisters, were sitting to the other side of her. They were jolly, buoyed by hope and moral purpose.
    â€˜Have you read
A Doll’s House
? It’s a play by Henrik Ibsen,’ one piped up.
    â€˜Christabel is pregnant,’ another whispered.
    â€˜No, she isn’t,’ the other replied conspiratorially. ‘She only thought she was. Wished she were. It was a phantom.’
    Grace stopped listening, entering into that state of awake sleepiness she existed in since she had come to London. London—this meeting—didn’t disturb her. It was the backdrop to her somnolence, like a fantastical bedroom in which she was sleeping. What I do to forget myself, she thought, and closed her eyes.
    â€˜You came; you read the pamphlet. I’m glad I’ve recruited at least one girl for the Cause,’ said a young woman with auburn hair, walking elegantly in front of the stage. It was Lady Lytton from the Ritz. She squeezed politely along the line of chairs towards Grace and the three sisters attempted to make space for her.
    â€˜Yes, ma’am,’ Grace replied. Did she have to play subservient, served and server, now they were no longer in the Ritz? Yes, she decided. Grace couldn’t talk to Lady Lytton in the way that Lady Lytton would be free to talk to her.
    â€˜Haven’t been anywhere this cramped since I went camping in Sissinghurst with Lord Baden-Powell’s Girl Guides. Eleven of us in a four-man tent.’ She straightened an unusual silver ring on her finger. Grace looked down at her own hands, once fair and fine, but already reddening and becoming chapped. Before, when the nearest she had come to work was collecting honey, she had worn her brother’s protective leather gloves; now there were no barriers between her skin and her work. Her hands were