The Lost Jewels - Kirsty Manning Page 0,10
crew. Nothing but a bottle of tea for his break.
If she was going past Cheapside, perhaps she could stop by with some food on her walk back.
‘Essie.’ Bridget touched her arm and shook her out of her daydream. ‘Look!’
A crowd of women closed in around their vehicle, causing the driver to slam on the brakes. Most wore white dresses, wide-brimmed hats clad with green and purple ribbons, or a ribbon fixed at the waist. The dresses tapered at the ankles, and Essie noted with a twinge of jealousy that most had fine stockings and pretty shoes with the latest French heel.
What would it feel like to have a spare change of fresh clothes and silk stockings? she wondered, as she tried to hide her callused hands in her rough skirts.
The driver cursed under his breath and muttered, ‘Bloody suffragettes. Clogging up the streets like this. Should be slammed in the clink, the lot o’ them.’
Several women were wearing placards dangling from thick straps at their shoulders emblazoned with the words: VOTES FOR WOMEN.
‘What do they say?’ Bridget whispered, cheeks pink with embarrassment.
Essie read the nearest placard. ‘They’re inviting us to a procession. This Friday evening at five-thirty in Knightsbridge.’
‘Us? In Knightsbridge?’ Bridget adjusted her hairnet and giggled. ‘Don’t think they’ll be wanting the likes of us, do you?’
Essie shrugged. Even if she’d wanted to attend, she had coal to fetch and supper to cook, then bathing and delousing the little ones before washing out their clothes for the week and hanging them over the fire.
Friday nights were always the same for Essie. The only highlight was a scrap of mackerel instead of turnip soup—if she could convince old Mr Foster to extend their credit for another week.
The driver leaned on his horn as the women walked in front of the vehicle, filling the pavement with linked arms, chanting: ‘Votes for women.’
Who were these immaculate women with time to protest in the streets? No jobs here—or in the home, she reckoned with a quick glimpse of their neatly gloved hands. A row of police riding on black Clydesdales started to appear from a distance, and the women in white started to move in circles, as if in a butter churn.
Soaring above them all was the Monument, Wren’s beautiful sculpture commemorating the Great Fire, golden urn glittering in the sunshine. Essie walked past it every day on her way to and from work, and often stopped to admire the frieze on the base, in which London was portrayed as a woman languishing, disrobed, on a pile of rubble. Bishops, king, architects and soldiers all crowded around to lift her to her feet. The woman—London—looked tired. Defeated. Probed and pulled by too many people.
Essie knew what it meant to have so many regarding you with expectant faces. Depending on you to keep going.
She’d heard it said that this sculpture represented the might of London. She would recover, pick herself up and fight again. But the sad line of London’s cheek—so many hands pushing and pulling at her shoulders—made it hard for Essie to breathe.
‘Eel, thanks, sir.’ Essie handed over her precious tuppence and tried to ignore her own hunger pangs as the pie man wrapped the pie in newspaper. She slipped the warm parcel into her apron pocket and felt the comforting weight against her leg.
‘I hope your brother knows how lucky he is,’ Bridget remarked. ‘I’d best be getting on. It’s mid-afternoon … If I walk back to work then ’ome again it’ll be long past dark. My babies are with Mother and she’ll be in a right state. Who’d’ve known the gentleman would take so long to choose his shirtfront? Tell you what, there was more gold in those columns at that Goldsmiths’ ’ouse than in the Crown Jewels. Surely the butler could have done his bidding today?’
‘You go.’ Essie shooed her along, wishing she had a second tuppenny to buy her new too-skinny friend a pie as well. ‘I’ll tell Mrs Ruben it was my fault.’
‘But she’ll dock your pay …’
‘Shush. Go.’
Bridget mouthed a thank you, fist clinging tight to her tuppence. She refused to slip the coin into her pocket in case it got lost. Closer to home, Bridget would probably buy some potatoes, a turnip and perhaps some salmon. For her babies. For her ailing mother. It wouldn’t go far enough …
Essie walked along Cheapside, scanning the demolition sites and listening for the tell-tale tink of pickaxes striking rock and rubble. Eventually she came to Freddie’s site, and