‘I keep telling you, Peterson, don’t stand there. Idiot!’
We established I’d spent sixteen days of unparalleled tedium and that I constituted no threat to life as we knew it and I skipped off to see Mrs Partridge, who made me sign hundreds of documents which mostly said that everything happening to me from now on was entirely my own fault. She sent me off to Wardrobe, who issued me with a full set of the coveted blues and all the rest of my kit and sent me back to Mrs Partridge again, who offered me the choice of a bigger room in the Staff Block or one in the main building. I went with the one in the main building. It had a bath.
I was allocated an attic room on the small, east landing. I had Dr Foster opposite me and Kalinda Black, another historian, on the other side. My room was long and narrow with a small window at the front overlooking the lake and a larger window with a low window seat overlooking a flat roof. Furnishings were the usual St Mary’s minimum – a Narnia wardrobe, a bed, a baggy couch, a bookcase, and a data table. But I did have a small bathroom where, for some reason, I had to climb over a vast, enamel, claw-footed bath to get to the toilet.
I bought a rug, some posters, and a corkboard where I could pin up my favourite bits and pieces. I blagged an old table from Housekeeping for all my paints and brushes, added a tin of biscuits and a kettle, and had everything I needed.
I loved my room, from the uneven floor to the pock-marked walls. It was the first space I’d ever had that was truly mine and no one could get in. I arranged my books, hung my blues in the wardrobe, and waited in excited anticipation for whatever came next.
Chapter Four
What came next was a reality check. We had two deaths in my first two weeks as a historian. Training had been difficult, hard work, strenuous, scary even, but apart from cuts, bruises, and the odd simple fracture, not particularly hazardous. All that was about to change.
Kalinda Black and Tim Peterson got the Peterloo Massacre; part of an ongoing ‘History of Democracy’ assignment, which included the Peasant’s Revolt and the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede. Baverstock and Lower got the peasants and Grant, Sussman and I hoped that if we kept quiet and tried to look normal, at least one of us would be included in the Runnymede jump. But the first in the series was Peterloo.
In August 1819, sixty thousand demonstrators assembled in St Peter’s Square, Manchester. They were anti-poverty and pro-democracy which did them no favours at all in the eyes of authority. Despite this, the demonstrators regarded this as a fun day out for the family, dressing in their Sunday best and bringing the kids.
Equally looking forward to the day, but for completely different reasons, were the local yeomanry, led by a Captain Hugh Birley. Drawn from local mill owners and shop proprietors, they would have had strong views about workers gaining the right to vote and having enough to eat.
Local magistrates read the Riot Act to a very small section of the crowd and then, legal duty done, withdrew to let the drunken yeomanry get on with it. They charged the crowd, ostensibly to arrest Henry Hunt who was speaking from a cart. The protestors linked arms to prevent this and were struck down by the yeomanry, who were, apparently, as pissed as newts. The crowd panicked; this was seen as an attack and six hundred Hussars went in. Eighteen people, including one woman and child, were killed. The military received a message from the Prince Regent, congratulating them on their success.
With Industrial History as her specialty and as a Mancunian herself, Kalinda Black was all set for this one. So keen was she to go that she ignored persistent abdominal pain, dosed herself with a year’s worth of laxatives, doubled over at breakfast one day, and despite loudly declaring it was only a spot of indigestion, got carted off to meet her fate in Sick Bay.
I sat contemplating a morning in the Library with no great enthusiasm. Sussman had taken himself off somewhere and I was lingering over a mug of tea before making a move. I jumped a mile as Grant threw himself into a chair beside me, face flushed with excitement, his faint Scottish accent more pronounced than usual. ‘Guess what? Black’s got appendicitis. They’re whipping it out as we speak.’
Really, I suppose, my reaction should have been concerned sympathy, but first things first.
‘So who’s going to Peterloo, then?’
‘Obviously, it’s going to be one of us, isn’t it?’
We looked at each other. I stood lazily. ‘Well, sadly, I’m in the Library all morning. I’ve got a pile of anthropology papers to read.’
‘Me too,’ he said casually. ‘What a bummer.’
I beat him to the door, but he drew ahead as we galloped across the Hall and he got to the Library first. Much good it did him because Dr Dowson, wise in the ways of historians, had two files already waiting. I felt a little bit guilty.