Трейси Шевалье - Falling Angel

When I tried to shift away, the hand Followed. I looked back-the man standing behind me was about Papa’s age, tall, gray haired, with a thin moustache and spectacles. His eyes were fixed on the platform. I could not believe it was his hand-he looked so respectable. I raised my heel and brought it down hard on the foot behind me. The man winced and the hand disappeared. After a moment he pushed away and was gone, someone else stepping into his place.

I shuddered and whispered to Maude, “Let’s get away from here,” but I was drowned out by a bugle call. The crowd surged forward and Maude was pushed into the back of the woman ahead of her, dropping my hand. Then I was shoved violently to the left. I looked around but couldn’t see Maude.

“If I may have your attention, I would like to open this meeting on this most momentous occasion in Hyde Park,” I heard a voice ring out. A woman had climbed onto a box higher than the rest of the women on the platform. In her mauve dress she looked like lavender sprinkled on a bowl of vanilla ice cream. She stood very straight and still.

“There’s Mrs. Pankhurst,” women around me murmured.

“I am delighted to see before me a great multitude of people, of supporters-both women and men-of the simple right of women to take their places alongside men and cast their ballots. Prime Minister Asquith has said that he needs to be assured that the will of the people is behind the call for votes for women. Well, Mr. Asquith, I say to you that if you were standing where I am now and saw the great sea of humanity before you as I do, you would need no more convincing!”

The crowd roared. I put my hands on the shoulders of the woman beside me and jumped up to try and see over the crowd. “Maude!” I called, but it was so noisy she would never have heard me. The woman scowled and shrugged off my hands.

Mrs. Pankhurst was waiting for the sound to die down. “We have a full afternoon of speakers,” she began as it grew quiet, “and without further ado-”

“Maude!” I cried.

Mrs. Pankhurst paused, and jerked her head slightly. “I would like to introduce-”

“Maude! Maude!”

“Lavinia!” I heard, and saw a hand fluttering above the crowd far to my right. I waved back and kept waving as I began to push toward the hand.

Mrs. Pankhurst had stopped again. “Shh! Shh!” women on the platform began to hiss. I continued to push, forcing spaces to open in front of me, ignoring whatever was happening on the platform. Then ahead of me I saw the garland of delphiniums and star jasmine I had woven that morning for Maude’s straw hat, and with one last shove I had found her.

We held on to each other tightly. Maude’s heart was beating hard, and I was trembling.

“Let’s get away from all these people,” Maude whispered. I nodded and, still holding tight to Maude, let her push away from the platform and out of the jam of people listening to Mrs. Pankhurst.

At last there was space again. When we reached the trees on the far edge of the crowd I stopped. “I’m going to be sick,” I said.

Maude led me to a tree, where I could kneel away from everyone. Afterward we found a shady spot to sit a little away from the base of the tree. We didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but watched people stroll or hurry past, detaching themselves from one wheel of spectators around a platform, joining another. We could see four platforms from where we sat. In the distance the women speaking on them were tiny figures whose arms moved about like windmills.

I was very thirsty.

Maude would speak eventually, I knew, and ask the question that must be asked. I dreaded it.

“Lavinia,” she said at last, “where is Ivy May?”

For the first time all day I began to cry. “I don’t know.”

Mummy was sitting just two trees away. We didn’t discover that until after the meeting had ended.

There was no point in searching for anyone while the speeches were being made and the crowd so tightly packed in. Lavinia was in despair, but I knew that Ivy May was a sensible girl-she might say little, but she heard everything, and she would know that we were to meet Mummy at Platform 5 after the Great Shout, whatever that was.

That is what I kept telling myself, and repeating to Lavinia, whenever she would listen. Eventually she laid her head in my lap and fell asleep, which is just like her in a dramatic moment. It is melodrama that she loves-to her true drama is dull. I fidgeted, waiting for the speeches to finish and for Lavinia to wake.

At last a bugle sounded. When it sounded a second time, Lavinia sat up, her face red and crumpled. “What time is it?” she said, yawning.

“I’m not sure. Close to five o‘clock, I expect.”

The distant crowds were waving their arms and cheering. The bugle sounded once more. A chant rose up like an orchestra swelling to a crescendo in a symphony. It sounded as if everyone were saying, “Folks are swimming.” Only the third time did I realize they were calling, “Votes for women!” The last one was loud like a thunderclap, and the cheers and laughter that followed like rain released from clouds.

Then, suddenly, the crowd broke up and a surge of people moved toward us. I scanned the passing faces for someone familiar. I did spy Eunice, who rushed past with a stray banner and pole. She did not see us and we did not try to stop her.

“We should go to Platform Five,” I said. “Someone is bound to be there.”

We linked arms and began to wade through the crowd, but it was very difficult as everyone was moving away from the platform rather than toward it. Everywhere there were exhausted faces-thirsty children, impatient women, concerned men wondering how they would get home through such crowds. Now that people were not marching in organized processions, the streets outside Hyde Park would be in chaos, jammed with people and cabs and overfull omnibuses. It would take hours to get home.

Finally we drew close to what I remembered as Platform 5, but the banner with the number 5 on it had been taken down. Mrs. Pankhurst and the other women had climbed down from the cart, and a man was hitching a horse up to it.

“They’re taking away the platform!” I cried. “How will we ever find Mummy without it?”

“There’s Caroline Black,” Lavinia said, pulling at my sleeve. “What on earth is she wearing?”

Caroline Black was hopping from foot to foot, still in her Joan of Arc armor. The white plume in her helmet bobbed up and down as she moved. She looked very grim, and my stomach turned over to see her alone.

“There you are!” she cried, not smiling sweetly at me as she usually did. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you for ages!”

“Where’s Mummy?” I demanded.

Caroline Black looked as if she might cry. “Your mother-she’s had a little mishap.”

“What happened?”

“It all went so well, that’s the shame of it.” Caroline Black shook her head. “We had a marvelous time, with such support from our comrades and the spectators. And the horse was lovely, so gentle, and a dream to ride. If only-”

“What happened? Where is she?” It was all I could do not to shriek the words.

“Someone let off firecrackers in the crowd along Oxford Street. The horse shied, and at that moment Kitty stepped in front of it to look at my banner-I don’t know why. The horse reared-I just barely kept my own seat. When it came down it kicked her in the chest.”

“Where is she now?”

“The daft thing insisted on finishing the march, leading the horse and all, as if nothing had happened. She said she was fine, just a bit breathless. And I stupidly allowed her. Then she wouldn’t leave during the speeches-she said she had to be here to find you afterward.”