I nodded, looked down at my feet. The floor of the sitting room was covered in a richly patterned carpet.
‘I didn’t think she’d survive the game,’ she said.
I looked up. ‘The game?’
‘Clearly it’s not why you’re here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I get two types of women knocking on my door,’ she said. ‘Those who get around too much and those who get around too little.’ She looked me up and down, took in every article of clothing. ‘You are the latter.’
‘And the game?’ I asked again, my hand going to my pocket to check I had a slip and pencil.
‘The game is whoring,’ she said, as if nothing worse than whist or draughts had crossed her lips. ‘There are players, like any game, though the dice are always loaded. When you lose you end up in gaol, the cemetery or here.’
She put her hand on my belly, and I jumped. When she began digging her fingers in, I tried to move away.
‘Stay still,’ she said, putting one hand in the small of my back so she could get purchase with the other. ‘Mrs Warren’s profession, some call it, because of the play by Bernard Shaw. Do you like the theatre?’ she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I was invited to the opening night of that one. Whores aren’t the only women who find their way to my door. I get my fair share of actresses too.’ She stopped prodding and took a step back.
‘I’m not …’
‘I can see that you’re neither a whore nor an actress,’ she said.
Then we stood there, silent. She was thinking, weighing something up. Finally, she let out a long breath.
‘It’s quickening,’ she said.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘Quickening is the fluttering in your belly which means the baby has decided to stay.’
I stared at her.
‘It means you’ve come to me too late.’
Thank God, I thought.
GAME
Prostitution.
‘The game is whoring. There are players, like any game, though the dice are always loaded.’
Mrs Smyth, 1907
QUICKENING
Stirrings of life.
‘Quickening is the fluttering in your belly which means the baby has decided to stay.’
Mrs Smyth, 1907
Sunnyside was quiet when I walked my bicycle through the gates. The afternoon was getting on; it was dusky and the Scriptorium was dark. Everyone had gone home. I could see Lizzie through the kitchen window, and I watched her for a while. She moved back and forth between the range and the table, no doubt preparing dinner for the Murrays. Once, when I was little, she told me she didn’t much like cooking.
‘What do you like?’ I’d asked.
‘I like sewing and I like looking after you, Essymay.’
I was shivering. I leaned the bicycle against the ash and walked towards the kitchen.
Inside, I stood on the threshold, the door closed behind me, the heat of the range warming my face. But the shivering didn’t stop.
Lizzie looked at me. Her hand hovered at her chest. She had questions she didn’t ask.
The shivering got worse, and she was there. Her thick arms around me, guiding me to a chair. She put a cup in my hands; it was almost too hot, but not quite. She told me to drink. I drank.
‘I couldn’t have done it,’ I said, looking up into her face. She held me against her belly and stroked my hair.
When she spoke, she was slow and careful, as if I were a stray cat she was afraid would run off before it could be helped. ‘He seemed like a nice enough man, that Bill. You could tell him,’ she said.
She held me a little tighter as she said it, and I didn’t move away. I’d thought about it. I’d imagined it. In my heart I was certain that Bill would do the right thing if he knew. That Tilda would make sure of it. I spoke as slowly and carefully as Lizzie just had.
‘I don’t love him, though. And I don’t want to be married.’
She stiffened slightly, and I felt her take a breath. Then she pulled a chair close to mine and sat opposite me, our hands clasped.
‘Every woman wants to be married, Essymay.’
‘If that’s true, then why isn’t Ditte married, or her sister? Why not Elsie or Rosfrith or Eleanor Bradley? Why not you?’
‘Not all women get the chance. And some … well, some are just brought up with too many books and too many ideas, and they can’t settle to it.’
‘I don’t think I could settle to it, Lizzie.’
‘You’d get used to it.’
‘But I don’t want to get used to it.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want things to stay as they are. I want to keep sorting words and understanding what they mean. I want to get better at it and be given more responsibility, and I want to keep earning my own money. I feel as though I’ve only begun to understand who I am. Being a wife or a mother just doesn’t fit.’ It all came out in a rush and ended in sobbing.
By the time the sobbing stopped I knew what I had to do. I asked Lizzie to find some notepaper and a pen. I would write to Ditte.
February 11th, 1907
My dear, dear Esme,
Of course you must come, and I will help arrange what must be arranged. But there is the question of your father, and of the way things might look. I will come to Oxford this Friday. I will arrive at 11.30am and would like you to meet me at the station. We will go straight to the Queens Lane Coffee House – it’s a long way from Jericho, and we’re unlikely to bump into anyone we know. Leave Lizzie to her duties at Sunnyside, but assure her that we three shall speak before I leave.
Your situation is not as rare as you might think. Many a young lady of means or education has found herself similarly inconvenienced. It is the oldest dilemma in history – the Virgin Mary, indeed! (Please don’t read this aloud to
