Emma Donoghue - The Sealed Letter

The girls sketch a simultaneous curtsy, and the maid closes the doors behind them.

It's oddly difficult to be alone with Helen, Fido finds. She hears herself swallow.

Helen's smile is tight. "When I spotted you on Farringdon Street, yesterday, you looked so-so changed, I hardly dared hail you."

"Older and fatter, you mean."

"No, no. I believe it's that you don't curl your hair anymore, and it's cut to your shoulders. And the shorter skirts."

Dowdy, Fido translates. "Yes, we working women tend to follow the country style," she says. "Nothing that will catch in machinery or trail in the dirt."

"Harry would never stand for an uncorseted wife," remarks Helen.

Is there a little envy in her tone? A pause. It's harder to keep the conversational plates spinning here than it was on the street. The pouring of tea takes up half a minute, then Fido launches into an enthusiastic précis of The Notting Hill Mystery.

"Well," says Helen, leaning back on the cushions, "I'm relieved you still have at least two relaxing habits in your ever-so-strenuous way of life. Novels and cigarettes."

"How did you-"

A giggle. "Yesterday, when I held your hand in the Underground, my fingers smelled of Turkish tobacco afterward."

"Mock all you like," says Fido, sheepish. There's no rational reason why a woman shouldn't smoke, especially if she finds it beneficial to her health-but somehow Fido prefers to do it in the privacy of her bedroom. "As for my strenuous way of life, I must tell you, work has been a revelation to me. What is it Mrs. Browning says?" She strains to remember. "Yes, that work is worth more in itself than whatever we work to get."

One slim eyebrow soars. "Hadn't you ever worked hard before you started going in for your rights?"

"Oh, Latin lessons with my father, sewing clothes for parish children," says Fido with a wave of the hand, "but nothing meaningful. When I happened across a copy of the English Woman's Journal and discovered the Cause…" She pronounces the word with an odd bashfulness. "I marched into 19 Langham Place, introduced myself to Miss Bessie Parkes, said 'Put me to any use at all.' Oh, the thrill of spending one's energies on something that really matters-" She breaks off, belatedly aware of the insult.

Helen's smile is feline.

Fido almost stammers. "What I meant is-for those of us without pressing duties, children to educate, and households to run, and-"

"Come, come, don't we know each other too well for cant? Mrs. Lawless gives the girls their lessons, and I handed my keys to Mrs. Nichols years ago. I pass my days reading, shopping, and yawning," says Helen easily. "London's so dead, off-season." She scans the drawing-room. "I'm thinking of having gaslight put in; I believe I could talk Harry into it, in the spirit of scientific progress."

"Think again," Fido advises her. "I find it more trouble than it's worth. It leaks, stinks of sulphur, blackens the ceiling, and it's far too hot in the summer."

"Mm," says Helen, "but so marvellously bright! Move with the times, isn't that the watchword for you moderns?"

"Only real progress," says Fido, a little uncomfortable with the teasing, "not experiment for its own sake."

"I'd call running one's own publishing house experimental. It must feel peculiar, to earn one's bread."

Fido grins at her. "I'll tell you what, my dear-if one gets paid for one's work, one knows somebody wants it. And one gains a power to do real good in the world. The first time I ever brought a cheque to the bank, and saw it cashed into hard golden sovereigns… Perhaps you should try it," she adds slyly.

Helen only giggles. "I wonder, did you read about Madame Genviève last week?"

"I don't know the lady."

"Nor I: a tightrope walker, as well as wife and mother," she explains. "Madame Genviève was performing blindfolded at a fête in Birmingham when she toppled to her death. It turns out she was unbalanced-"

"Mentally?"

"Literally," Helen corrects her, "by being in the last month of a delicate condition."

Fido winces.

"So perhaps nature has set some bounds to female ambition?"

"That's a ghoulish anecdote, Helen, not a reasoned argument." She cackles.

"I always felt like a cow, in the final months. It was hard enough to walk upstairs, let alone along a high wire."

"Come, come," says Fido, straight-faced, "what of the pride of giving life to a new soul?"

"Speaks one who's never tried it," cries Helen, poking her in the arm. "All I remember is the smell of the chloroform, and the curious sensation of skyrockets going off in my head. After that it's simply messy and confining," she tells Fido, "and I could never summon any tendre for them till the first few months were over. A newborn's frightful when undressed: swollen head, skinny limbs, and that terrible froglike action."

All Fido can do is laugh.

"But tell me more about this Reform Firm, isn't that what you call yourselves?"

"You're well informed." Fido is gratified that Helen would take such an interest in the Cause.

"Oh, the papers from home were full of you and your comrades at Langham Place: your English Woman's Journal and Married Women's Property Bill, your Victoria Press…"

"Then I'm sure you've read as much in the way of mockery as praise. The Reform Firm is what our enemies dubbed us-but like the Quakers, we've embraced the title, to take the sting out of it."

"So is this Miss Parkes the boss of the Firm?"

Fido shakes her head. "We're an informal knot of fellows," she explains, "each working on a variety of schemes to improve the lot of women. For instance, after that dreadful shipwreck last year in which all the female passengers drowned, we managed to persuade Marylebone Baths to open for women's classes one day a week."

Helen is clearly not interested in swimming classes. "Come, there's always a leader."

"Well, Madame Bodichon-Bar Smith, as was-could be called our guiding angel," says Fido, "as she ran and funded the first campaigns. But she's married a wild Algerian doctor and spends most of the year there."

"How sensible of her," says Helen wryly.

"Miss Bessie Parkes is Madame's chief acolyte and dearest friend, and set up the English Woman's Journal, and edited it till her health obliged her to resign the job to Miss Davies-a new comrade, but awfully capable-so yes, I dare say Miss Parkes could be considered first among equals" Fido admits. "My own efforts have focused on the press and SPEW-the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women-"

"What an unfortunate acronym," cries Helen.

"Isn't it! But five years ago, when we founded it in a surge of zeal, that seemed a trivial consideration."

"Tell me, which of these ladies-" Helen breaks off. "You're all ladies, I suppose?"

The question makes Fido uncomfortable. "By education, if not by birth. Miss Boucherett rides to hounds, whereas Miss Craig's a glover's daughter," she says a little defiantly.

"But what I want to know is, which of them is your real friend?"

Fido doesn't know how to answer.

"Who's supplanted me?"

For all its mocking tone, the question hits Fido like a crowbar. "Helen! You should know me better than to think I'd sacrifice old attachments for new."

Helen's face blooms, dazzles. "How it relieves me to hear you say that."

"There are certainly bonds of affection between us all at Langham Place, but-Isa Craig is very sympathetic, for instance, but I don't know that I could count her as a real friend. And since the death of Miss Procter-"

"You knew the poet, personally?" asks Helen, audibly impressed. "Adelaide was our hardest worker, and our wittiest," says Fido sadly. "Since that loss, old ties have frayed somewhat, and differences loom larger. But our work still unites us," she adds, afraid she's giving the wrong impression. "There's a great spirit of love at bottom."