Still reeling mentally from the shock of discovering that Patience was not only married but had left the vicarage years ago to enter the nursing profession, Sophy stared at her cousin. She could see where the transformation had occurred now. For the first time in her life Patience looked happy. ‘Do you live in London now, or are you visiting?’
‘Oh, only visiting. It’s our wedding anniversary. We’ve been married two years this week, and as Florence Nightingale is having the Freedom of the City conferred on her on Monday, we thought we’d spend a few days here and try to catch a glimpse of her. She’s such a wonderful woman and absolutely amazing for eighty-seven years old.’
Sophy nodded. ‘Are you still working as a nurse?’
‘Of course.’ Patience glanced up at her husband with adoring eyes. ‘William has no problem with me continuing with my career even though it does sometimes mean we’re ships that pass in the night. William’s a paediatrician at the same hospital and with night duty and such . . .’ She shrugged. ‘But we get by, don’t we, William?’
‘Splendidly, most of the time.’ William smiled, and there was no doubt he doted on his wife.
‘I don’t suppose . . .’ Patience hesitated. ‘You wouldn’t like to have dinner with us one night? You and your husband? We leave London on Tuesday morning and it would be so nice to catch up a little. John and Matthew are both married now, you know, and John is the father of one-year-old twin boys.’
Sophy didn’t know how to reply. Part of her was glad to see Patience, and the other part of her wanted to take to her heels and run. With an effort she pulled herself together and injected warmth into her voice when she said, ‘I’m sorry, Patience, but dinner’s not possible as I’m on stage each evening, and furthermore, Toby is . . . is unwell.’ Seeing the disappointment in her cousin’s face, she added quickly, ‘But we could meet for lunch if you like, the three of us?’
Patience’s face lit up. ‘Really? That would be lovely. Come and join us at the hotel then. Shall we say tomorrow at twelve o’clock? Does that suit?’
Sophy nodded. ‘Tomorrow it is.’ She turned to Patience’s husband again and extended her hand, saying, ‘It’s been lovely to meet you, William,’ but before she could make her goodbyes to Patience, her cousin was hugging her tight, murmuring, ‘You won’t change your mind, will you? You will come?’
‘Of course I’ll come.’ Even as she said it she was reflecting that Patience knew her better than she knew herself.
The suffragette meeting was more harrowing than Sophy expected, revealing, as it did, an inside view of the horrors of prison life. Emmeline Pankhurst’s vivid account of the drudgery and misery of her imprisonment was harrowing. The meagre rations, the coarse, scratchy clothing with its convict’s arrows, the dismal surroundings and the desperate unhappiness of her fellow inmates was compelling hearing, and it was hard to acquaint such dreadful happenings with the beautifully dressed and aristocratic-looking woman talking to the large crowd that had come to see her.
‘All the hours seem very long in that place,’ Mrs Pankhurst said calmly, her perfectly pitched voice carrying to the back of the hall where the meeting was being held. ‘The sun can never get in, and every day is changeless and uninteresting. Within a very short time one grows too tired to go through to the exercise yard and take the air, even though the yearning for the smell and feel of the outside world is paramount.’
‘And what was her heinous crime?’ Cat whispered at the side of Sophy. ‘Conducting a peaceful march through the streets of London, that’s all. Like she said in court, the disturbance that developed was the fault of the authorities who’d instructed the police to use strong measures. Mounted police riding into the march to break it up, I ask you! Women were knocked down and bruised and their clothes torn, and that lasted for five hours. There’s Finland giving women seats in the Finnish Parliament this year, and here we have the Prime Minister saying we have to be patient and wait rather than act in a pugnacious spirit! Women have been waiting for decades and where’s it got us? Nowhere, that’s where.’
‘You don’t actually have to convince me,’ Sophy whispered back. ‘I’m a woman, I’m on your side, remember?’
Cat giggled. ‘Just checking.’
They left the hall to find the weather had changed dramatically during the two hours the meeting had been in progress. The sky was overcast and grey, and a cold drizzle was misting the streets. There had been the usual number of hecklers and ne’er-do-wells inside the hall – men who favoured the MP who had openly declared two or three years ago that ‘men and women differed in mental equipment, with women having little sense of proportion, and giving women the vote would not be safe’. One or two of the more unpleasant types a meeting such as the one today always seemed to attract eyed Sophy and Cat as the two women hugged on the steps of the building.