The Kingdom of the Rose

PREFACE

The Kingdom of the Rose

Eglantine Thorpe's mother predicted that no one would love her, by which she meant that her plain, bluestocking daughter would not make a good marriage. In that, at least, Mrs Thorpe was proved right.

Born in 1896, Eglantine belonged to that generation of women whose men were killed in the First World War. Also, like so many of them, she had to battle to win for herself a good education and a career. And when, years later, she wanted to marry, she had to choose between marriage and her job, for the law as it then was did not allow her to have both.

As England was shaken by two world wars, strikes, unemployment, political and technological change, Eglantine and others like her fought for those rights which women nowadays take for granted, such as the freedom to decide for themselves whether to marry, have children, study, enter a profession or go into politics. But for them it was a long struggle and they were often mocked for their pains. Contemporary women owe them a great debt: Eglantine Thorpe, the rose of the title, is a heroine too long unsung.

She first appeared as a minor character in Snow in Winter but the strength of her personality was such that the author had to explore it to the full and give Eglantine a book of her own. A historian as well as an accomplished novelist, Margaret Bacon has not only created a vivid and endearing character, but has also thrown into dramatic perspective the major events of this century and caught the distinctive flavour of each decade. Older readers will re-live many of their experiences in the book's pages and younger ones will discover much that they did not know about the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. More than a novel, The Kingdom of the Rose is an accurate and moving portrait of England in the twentieth century.

Margaret Bacon has such intelligent writing sensitivity that the concept of reading fiction fades away into the feel of real drama. Yorkshire Post

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Dr. Leslie Dowell for sharing with me his knowledge of rural medical practice during the past hundred years. I am also indebted to Miss Sybil Peatfield for the help she gave me with the chapters involving changes in education since the First World War and to Mrs. Charis Frankenburg for her recollections of the Birth Control movement in the 1920s. I am most grateful too to the Librarian of the Fawcett Society for help in obtaining books on the social conditions of working women and their children in the first part of this century. Finally my warmest thanks are due to those who helped me by remembering things past; they are too many to mention by name but their interest and patience never ceased to surprise me. I am only sorry that in the end I was able to use such a small proportion of the fascinating material which they so willingly offered me.

Margaret Bacon

Chapter One

Edward Thorpe did not suffer fools gladly, especially if they were relations. He stood now, leaning against the overmantel glaring at his brother.

"Well, that's what I think,'' Albert said.

But you're not thinking,'' Edward exploded. You are just making noises with your mouth that your ears like to hear."

Albert smiled back good-naturedly.

"Well, that's what everybody's saying, anyway,'' he said.

Eglantine watched them from the window seat where she had been sent by her mother to sit until she had finished her sampler. She had no doubt that Edward was right. She would have taken his side against Albert and all the others who were saying something different. Not that she knew anything about these Balkans; she was not allowed to look at the newspaper in case she read something unsuitable. It was just, she admitted to herself as she picked at her sampler, that she was always on Edward's side. And always would be.

She hated the sampler with a loathing she felt for nothing else in the whole world. She had started it on her tenth birthday, which meant that she had been working on the miserable thing for three years. The alphabet, in capitals and then in small letters, represented one wasted year, the figures of Adam and Eve, one each side of a very straight tree with a snake looped around it, represented another. Since then she had been working on the names of all her family, including not only her father and mother, her three brothers and herself, but also of a brother who had subsequently died of diphtheria at the age of three, and a sister who had died in infancy. So much did she dislike the sampler that when last year she had observed her mother growing plumper, her only reaction had been one of rage that she might have to stitch yet another name. However, her fear had proved groundless.

She jabbed the needle in now for the last time, just as Edward was saying, All right, so another crisis is settled, but there'll be war in the end, you know, for one reason or another or even for no particular reason at all, if we go on preparing for it.

She cut off the last thread and jumped up, flushed. There, she said. There, it's finished!

Edward turned to her, surprised. Then the darkness left his face and he beamed at her. He strode across the room and kissed her. Congratulations, ma'am, he said. And forgive us for talking politics at such a historic moment.

He took the sampler and spread it out over the back of a chair. Its canvas was crumpled, the stitches uneven. Here and there were dirty patches where she had pricked her finger and tried to rub off the blood. The whole thing was out of shape and bedraggled.

All ready for framing? he asked uncertainly.

I don't care what Mama does with it. I'd like to hack it up and burn it.

She'd only make you do another, Eg, Edward warned.

She shook her head, unruly hair falling over her flushed face. Never. I'm never going to do another stitch.

Albert strolled over. You'll never get a husband, Eg, if you can't sew, he pronounced.

I don't care. I don't want one.

He looked at her, his eyes assessing. She knew what he was thinking. There was no need to put it into words, but being Albert, he did.

Perhaps that's just as well, he said.

He spoke without malice. The wound was consequently greater. She saw Edward turn on him in a fury, heard herself make a choking sound and ran out of the room.

She rushed across the hall, bounded up the shallow stairs two at a time and tore along the corridor to her bedroom. A housemaid stood back in some alarm to let her pass. Then she was inside, the door slamming behind her.

She forced herself over to the dressing table. The looking glass had three wings, so she could inspect it from all angles, her threefold ugliness: her red face, which sun and wind whipped up to crimson, her nose which even at thirteen was adult-sized and crooked, her huge uneven teeth between lips which somehow did not match each other. But the hair! No crowning glory that, a crowning insult rather. It had a springy, unmanageable life of its own, like tropical vegetation.

Moreover, her plainness was not of the passive sort that might be ignored, or regarded with decent compassion. The round eyes, which looked as if she were stretching them wide-open in deliberate surprise, even though she wasn't, seemed to demand attention. People were startled by her ugliness when she was presented to them. She saw it in their faces. Then came the dreadful moment when her name had to be spoken. Presented with this tall, gawky body, topped with a face of such curious and arresting ugliness, then to be told that it was called Eglantine was too much for some visitors. Titters were discreetly converted into coughs, mouths disappeared quickly behind lace-edged handkerchiefs.

She would never forgive her mother for giving her that name, never, she vowed as she stared at the three reflections. Why couldn't she have given her an ordinary name? A few years earlier she had called her son Edward after the old Queen’s son, why shouldn't she have shown a similar devotion to her sovereign by calling her daughter Vicky or Alice? It was a wicked thing to do, she said to herself as she began to stride about the room. But no, she must be fair. Her mother couldn't have known: a lot of babies look dreadful, she herself had seen them. But most of them grew up into pretty little toddling things. Her mother couldn't have foreseen, when she affixed this flowery label to it, that no such transformation would befall her latest born.

She stopped striding and stood very still, appalled by the realisation that nobody was to blame, there was no relief to be had by hurling accusations against her mother. It was unfair, so she couldn't do it. Her sense of justice was almost as maiming as her ugliness. Suddenly the thought that she would carry this body, this face and the unsuitable floral name throughout her life until she died was too much to bear and she hurled herself across the bed and began to sob.

Once having started to cry she couldn't stop. There was Edward's departure tomorrow to be mourned, and her own return to the Academy. She cried for the continual humiliations that awaited her there, for the friendlessness, for never being able to do things properly. For the injustices. Her memory savaged her with scenes from the past, moments like the one when Miss Samson had held up her needlework in front of the class and said, Of course I could see Eglantine Thorpe's stitches from the top of Priory Hill. She heard again the sycophantic titters of the other girls, felt again the prickling behind her eyes. The tears she had not shed then, she let fall now. At the time she had just ached at the injustice of it: from the top of Priory Hill you wouldn't even be able to see the petticoat, let alone the stitches. You probably wouldn't even be able to see Miss Samson either, holding it up with such a look of pleasure on her face. She had kept tears at bay by deliberately training her mind on what was visible and what was not from the top of Priory Hill.

Even so, lessons were easier to bear than recreation times. There she was at the mercy of the other girls with their endless chatter about beaux and fashions which she could not join in. Even when they were all quite little she never seemed to be one of them. For as long as she could remember she had always been the one who was left out when sides were picked, the one who approached a group of girls at play only to find that somehow a circle of backs was all she could see, a circle closed against her. To her uttermost shame she could even remember once humbly asking if she could join in, and being contemptuously rejected.

Of course she would go on pretending that she liked walking by herself round and round the school garden, reading a book, but her nature was sociable, she wanted to be liked. She wanted to have someone to talk to about the ideas that buzzed about in her head. She was quite humble. She didn't expect affection, much less love, any more; she would have made do with tolerance.

There were consolations; the sound of the bell ringing at the end of recreation was always a comfort. It took her into a room where she had her own desk, her own place, hers by right, given to her by people in power, which could not be denied her. She did not have to beg to be allowed to exist in that space, nor to sit next to her appointed neighbours.

With this comforting thought her sobs began to subside. After a while she got up, drew back her square, thin shoulders, poured some water from the jug into the bowl and washed her face. The huckaback towel was slipping over her skin without absorbing much moisture, when she heard a knock at the door.

Who is it?

Only me, Edward replied.

Oh, come in, she called cheerfully.

Edward was not deceived. He shut the door behind him, walked over to her, removed the towel from her face and put it on the clothes rack. Then he stooped over her and took her face between his hands.

Want to talk about it? he asked.

What?

What you've been crying about.

She shrugged.

He pulled two comfortable chairs up to the window. It was a sunny afternoon. The view over the garden was peaceful, Albert and a friend were walking down the path to the tennis court, swinging rackets. Then they were hidden from sight by the shrubbery. Everything was bursting into leaf, the green leaves still fresh. Being an industrial suburb of course the leaves would soon be dark with smoke and when you lost a tennis ball in the bushes, your hands got streaked with black looking for it.

I wish you weren't going away tomorrow, she said suddenly.

I know. It's very unfair. You should be going away to a decent school too.

Oh, I didn't mean that. It's just...

It was no good. How could she describe the loneliness, the not having anybody, but anybody, to talk to? Everyone in the whole world disapproved of her, except him. And tomorrow he would go.

But it is unfair, he repeated, that harsh note creeping into his voice. For goodness' sake, let's be honest. You're every bit as clever as I am. So what happens? I've been sent to a good school and with luck I'll go to Oxford next year. And you? You get sent to that ridiculous Academy of Miss Ferris's or whatever she's called and spend all your time doing things like that damned tapestry that you've no gift for.

It was the first time he had sworn in front of her. Confidence welled up in her at this sign of esteem.

It's better than Miss Jones the governess, she said bravely. And none of the other girls seem to mind the academy. It's just me.

Her voice, despite all her efforts, quavered. Increasingly nowadays it seemed that it was just her that was wrong.

Rubbish. It's not just you,'' again anger roughened the edges of his voice. Listen, Eg. For years I took it for granted. You were a girl, so of course Mama and Papa were right to inflict tapestries and Joneses and Academies on you. I didn't know anything else. But I do now. Things have changed. There are chaps at school whose sisters go to schools where they're taught just as well as we are – boarding schools and high schools. And some go to the University too. George's sister took her higher certificate last year and is going to the London School of Economics. I tell you it's a different world from this!"

Oh she knew, she knew. But as far as her parents were concerned, as far as all the families they knew in Throxton were concerned, they might never have existed, Miss Beale and Miss Buss, Emily Davies, Mary Fawcett and all the others that Edward often told her about. Worse than that, if they were recognized it was only as odd, unnatural women, to be mocked by all respectable ladies.

I tell you, if they'd send you away to a decent school or let you go to the new high school in Throxton, you'd shine, Eg. I know you would.

She smiled at the word remembering her reflection in the glass. The only thing that shone was her huge, tight-skinned nose.

"I tell you, you'd shine,'' he shouted at her, exasperated by her smiling disbelief.

There was such love and kindness behind his anger that she looked up at him, round eyes bright with appreciation, her mouth lurching up into a great grin of affection, a joyful light seemed to shine from her.

Great God Almighty, Edward thought, she's beautiful.

Well, she said cheerfully, since Mama and Papa won't let me be a blue stocking, and since Albert says nobody will want to marry me, what am I to do?

One day, Edward said solemnly, some chap will love you not just because you're clever but because you're beautiful.

She stared at him for a moment in dumb astonishment and then she began to laugh. Great gales of laughter seemed to issue forth from between the uneven teeth and it was such an infectious sound that her brother joined in and they made so much noise together as they rolled helplessly in their chairs by the window, that they did not hear another tap on the door. Their mother came in unnoticed and stood for a moment, a look of exasperation on her pretty little face, as she watched them.

Then they saw her and their laughter petered out and they looked apprehensive. Edward was not allowed in her bedroom. They waited for the storm to break. But all she said was You must neaten the edges, Eglantine as she held out the dreadful sampler.

Elizabeth Thorpe was aware of coming from an older, better family than her husband. Her grandfather had kept a carriage and her uncle by marriage was a baronet. But whereas the Thorpes were a family on the rise, the Olroyds were on the way down. Not to put too fine a point on it, they were poor. She had grown up hating the pinching gentility of her youth, her father always anxious over business, her mother always having to make do. So although she knew that people said she was marrying beneath her when she accepted George Thorpe, she was so relieved at her escape from poverty that she vowed she would never let herself resent his unpolished ways.

She could not help noticing them, of course. She would have preferred him to have a more refined accent, to have gentler manners, to be less blatant in his references to money, not to call her Liz in public as he frequently did. She herself was always scrupulous in calling him Mr. Thorpe in company, for she considered it the genteel thing to do.

She had done her duty by her husband, giving him a well run home and three handsome sons. The eldest, William, was established abroad serving the Empire, and there was hope that he would soon serve the family firm by increasing its export orders. Albert was steady and industrious and would take over the mill one day from his father. Edward was brilliant in a way that made her a little apprehensive, but no doubt he would go away and be brilliant elsewhere and it would not disturb her life in Throxton. She was pleased with her three sons; she offered them proudly to the world.

But Eglantine, from the day she was born, she had thought of as belonging entirely to herself. Eglantine was for her. She day-dreamed of how the little girl would grow up as her companion, how they would go round visiting together, shop together, choosing ribbons and gloves as she and her mother would have liked to do, but lacked the means. Eglantine should have all the things which she had lacked. The opportunities for Eglantine were endless: with her mother's good breeding and her father's wealth she should be a pearl in Throxton society.

When Eglantine showed signs of not conforming, therefore, her mother felt something close to panic. It was essential that Eglantine should be found pleasing in Throxton eyes. The more she rebelled the more her mother tried to force her to conform, redoubling her efforts to get her polished so that she would move in the right circles, marry well. Otherwise there was no future for her, none. It was for this reason that she felt anger rise in her as she stood in Eglantine's bedroom holding the tapestry. She looked at her daughter's crumpled dress, her wild hair, her skin which tears and laughter had made blotchy.

And just look at you, she exclaimed. What a dreadful sight!

Eglantine reached down to straighten her skirt. She felt herself growing clumsier and uglier under the steady gaze of her mother's cold blue eyes.

I'm sorry, she muttered.

I should think so. And really Edward you do nothing but encourage her.

Well, it's time somebody did, Mama, Edward said drily.

I don't know what you can mean, Edward. She has a home which many girls would envy and a kind father who has given her the best education at the most expensive academy in the district.

But she doesn't like it there, Mama. She learns nothing that's any use to her.

Rubbish, Edward. What do you know about the education of young ladies? Miss Ferris's Academy teaches everything a young lady needs. Only the other evening when I was listening to Elizabeth Newton playing I thought what a credit she was to the Academy. If Eglantine should turn out as accomplished as that, I should be very well pleased.

It may suit Elizabeth Newton, but it doesn't suit Eglantine, Edward persisted.

Is this true, Eglantine? her mother asked sharply. Can you really be so ungrateful?

I'm not ungrateful, Mama, Eglantine said as firmly as she could. It's just that I don't seem any good at the things they teach, and...

Then it's not the Academy that's at fault – it's you.

Yes, I think it is just me. They laugh at me. If I forget and happen to mention some of Edward's books I've read...

Her mother turned to Edward in cold outrage. Is this true, sir? Do you let your sister read your books?

Edward looked uncomfortable, but answered calmly, Of course, Mama. There aren't books written for men and others for women. There are just good books, interesting books and...

Even if what you say is true, which it is not, his mother interrupted. I must remind you, sir, that Eglantine is not a woman. She is a child of thirteen.

Nonetheless, she has a good brain, which should be trained and...

Brain, his mother almost shrieked. Whatever would I do with a brainy daughter?

She turned on her heel and made for the door, which Edward opened for her.

I shall speak to your father, she warned coldly as she went out.

George Thorpe lay back in his chair in the smoking room and stared gloomily at the portrait of his grandfather. The old man stared back, as if surprised at what he saw. Ugly old devil, you could see where poor Eglantine got her looks from.

He was very old of course when it was painted. Boys born into poverty are too hard at work all their lives to stop for pictures. That has to wait until they're too old to make a decent picture of.

George Thorpe was gloomy by nature, a characteristic that was reinforced in middle age by chronic indigestion. He took a bismuth powder now and lay back in his chair and continued his perusal of his grandfather. Clogs to clogs in three generations, they used to say. Well, certainly grandfather had gone to work in clogs from the tenement house in Cow Lane where he had lived with his thirteen brothers and sisters. No wonder he looked surprised at what he saw as he sat for his portrait in the house of his old age, a grand Georgian one in an elegant terrace in the heart of industrial Throxton. Men like his grandfather and father, even when they made a fortune, still preferred to live near their mills and factories. They liked to be able to see what was going on from their own windows. So did he too; he would gladly have gone on living in that house all his life.

But Elizabeth had thought differently. Just before their second child was born, she had begun to press him to move away from the town. She had nothing against the Georgian terraced house, she said, it was a gracious house, well-proportioned. She just felt it was inappropriate to their station in life to be living alongside the workers' slums. It embarrassed her, it would not be right when the children grew older. He agreed, not wanting to upset her with arguments, not in her condition. So they moved out to the leafy suburbs with their long drives and detached houses, of which The Elms was the grandest. Mind you even out here you never got away from the industry which was Throxton's life-blood. You could still see the mills and colliery winding-gear on the skyline. There was no more beautiful sight in George Thorpe's eyes. All the same he missed the sound of factory sirens and the clatter of clogs on cobbles.

Clogs to clogs in three generations, the phrase made him uneasy. But it wouldn't happen in his family; each generation worked hard and spent wisely. They spent in different ways, that was all, for you had to move with the times and the family had acquired standing in Throxton. At first he had had doubts about the boys going away to public school, for they belonged to a Throxton which had prospered as the Thorpes had prospered. The mill had been his school, which was just as well because when his father died, not long after his grandfather, he himself was only fifteen. But that's a good age if you've been going down there and learning the way of it since you were five. His earliest memory was of sitting on his father's shoulders watching the great boilers being stoked. He was quite able to take over at fifteen. He'd been in charge ever since.

So when Elizabeth had said the boys must go away to school to be turned into gentlemen, he had had the self-made man's doubts about giving his sons an education which he himself had managed so well without. But Elizabeth had been proved right; the school they chose was full of other sons of industry being turned into gentlemen. It had turned out well. William was prospering and Edward would have been difficult anyway. The next generation would be safe in the hands of Albert. He was steady was Albert. He wasn't clever like Edward maybe, but shrewd enough. That was what counted in business. Of course he hadn't started at the bottom and worked his way up; Elizabeth had thought that would be inappropriate. All the same, if he himself should die young, as his own father had done, the business would be all right in Albert's hands.

There wasn't much comfort in his life, he thought suddenly as he looked about the luxurious room. Always problems, both at home and at work. On Sundays too he missed the warmth and friendliness of his old Chapel. Elizabeth had thought it better, when the first baby was expected, that the Thorpes should change to Church and at the time it had felt like promotion. But nowadays as he sat under the high-and-dry sermons of the rector and listened to the exchange of civilities afterwards, he often longed for the friendliness and warmth of the chapel-going days of his youth, for the unrestrained way he had used to join in those noisier services, for the comfortable feeling of belonging.

He mixed himself another bismuth drink and swallowed it before he made his way unwillingly to the drawing room. He loved his wife and respected her views, but at the moment he did not want to hear them.

Eglantine was hovering outside the drawing room door.

Well, I hear you're dissatisfied with your schooling, he said peevishly. The Academy isn't good enough for you, maybe?

Oh, no, she said anxiously, following him into the room. It's not that, Papa. Perhaps I'm not good enough for the Academy.

Well, there's always the Company School.

It had been renamed the Girls Public Day School Trust, but he still referred to it as it used to be in his father's day.

Oh, could I go there instead, could I?

She grinned at him in sudden relief. She had forgotten the way her father, by taking a simple view of things, could sometimes actually make them simple.

They were interrupted by her mother coming into the room. Now everything would become complicated and difficult again. Her mother glanced from one to the other, taking in the situation.

Edward has been putting silly ideas into Eglantine's head, she said. She'll be wanting to go away to a boarding school like a boy next.

Nay, we've been talking about the Company place. It's all right, is the Company School.

He sounded belligerent, his northern accent contrasting strongly with his wife's more refined lightness of tone.

Really, Mr. Thorpe, quite common people send their daughters there.

Oh father, please, Eglantine broke in, terrified that the moment of simple understanding between them would be lost.

Well, if it's what you want, love, he said, glancing at her indulgently. It's cheaper, too, he added.

Mr. Thorpe! his wife exclaimed, shocked.

It is. Sam's lass goes there and we've compared prices, Sam and me.

His wife looked at him hard.

In that case, she said, you do realise that people will think that you are taking your daughter away from the Academy in order to send her to a cheaper school? They will conclude that you are in financial difficulties.

It was a telling argument. He could not bear anyone to think he could not afford something. Besides, it was true; in a place the size of Throxton a rumour that he could no longer afford to give his daughter an expensive education could soon get round and set people whispering about his finances. He knew what lack of confidence could do in business. He feared anything that might make people doubt his bond.

Well, perhaps your mother's right, he said to Eglantine. In this world, you very often don't get what you pay for. But you certainly don't get what you don't pay for. The Academy may not give you all you want, but t’other school is cheaper, so it certainly won't give you as much.

Chapter Two

When her parents decreed that she could not leave the Academy, Eglantine accepted that she would never be able to change schools. It did not occur to her that the school itself might change. Yet it happened within a year. Miss Ferris was taken ill and retired and was replaced by young Miss Lambert, a foreigner from the south, who, Throxton society learned to its disgust, had actually been to Newnham, the college for women at Cambridge.

But Miss Lambert worked cautiously; she gave no cause for complaint. Tall and elegant, she was every inch a lady, nobody could deny it. She believed in tone and lectured the girls upon the necessity of it, as they duly reported to their mamas. Nor did she ape the High School with its free afternoons for unladylike games and its neglect of fine sewing. On the surface little changed, but the reforms were radical and by the time three of the remaining staff from Miss Ferris' day had retired at the end of the first year and been replaced by women of her own kind, Miss Lambert had reorganized the school. But she did not place one elegant foot wrong and as a result only one girl was removed, her parents complaining that she was being made too thoughtful.

To Eglantine it was a new world. The routine of catechism, which she had thought an integral part of school life, indeed the only method of teaching known to Miss Ferris, was steadily reduced and finally disappeared. For years she had sat through lessons labelled History, English, Geography and General Knowledge which consisted of questions and answers learned by heart. She had listened to girls spouting long paragraphs by rote, knowing they had no inkling of the meaning of all those polysyllables they were uttering. She had listened with bewilderment, quite sure it couldn't be right and yet, since the staff took it for granted and the girls accepted it as normal, fearing that it must be herself and not the method which was at fault.

Instead of the catechism, there were now talks, discussions, books to be read, essays to write. Now it was a question of how to study, how to think. Advice was available, there was laughter, there was irony. She drank it all in, for it fell like sweet rain on her parched and thirsty mind. She learned Latin and a Mathematics that was quite different from the mental arithmetic routine in which Miss Ferris's younger sister used to line them up and move them one place up the line for every answer they got right. Eglantine had been good at this, but the other girls always pinched her as she moved up, so she took to saying the wrong answers to avoid their punishment. There were also new subjects with frightening names like moral science and logic, but these were taken by Miss Lambert herself, who read aloud to a group of girls while they sewed, so that to her surprise Eglantine found herself actually looking forward to opening her work basket.

Most amazing of all, they even discussed religion, which Eglantine had always assumed was something which must be accepted, not debated. For as long as she could remember she had been clamped into her best and most uncomfortable clothes on Sundays and put into a pew where it had been made clear to her that any questioning, any straying from the path of absolute obedience would be punished with eternal damnation. Since she heard much at home as well as in church of honouring her parents, she assumed that the obedience was to her mother as much as to God. Her father didn't really enter into it since he was mostly out at the mill.

After the service, as they walked down the long drive to the carriages waiting in the road, her mother would instruct the boys in whom they should bow to, and which of the less important members of the congregation merited only a nod. For years it had struck her as strange that after an hour or so of insisting on her own unworthiness, of singing the praises of humility, of carrying on about lowly stables and humble carpenters, her mother should be saying, Bow to Lady Hall, Albert, and, "Really, Edward, there is no need to acknowledge Miss Smithers. I'm sure she doesn't expect it. Nor the Gibbings – they don't even come to church in a carriage now.''

She could not, of course, express her bewilderment; she was much too frightened of Hellfire for that. She concluded that the message of the New Testament was something not to be taken at its face value. Like good manners, it consisted of words which for some reason you had to say, but didn't have to mean.

And now here was Miss Lambert remarking quite casually, I've never been able to believe that a loving God would condemn any of us to eternal fire, and she realised that what she had thought axiomatic was open to question, like everything else. It seemed the most liberating thing of all in those marvellously liberating years. Nothing ever restored her faith in church-going, but Miss Lambert's words preserved the message she might have heard there.

If these were years of liberation at school, however, at home the restrictions increased. Her clothes symbolised it. Her skirts got longer and heavier and had to have tighter waistbands to support them. Her neckbands were higher and needed whalebones to keep them upright. Her hair was always being tied up with ribbons that slipped off. When she was seventeen it would have to be put up and she would not be allowed to go out without a hat skewered on top. And gloves, always gloves. From all this there was absolutely no escape. The rules were inexorable. Not only her mother but no mother in Throxton would have allowed her daughter to disgrace herself by appearing in any way different from other young ladies.

Summer time was worse and above all the month by the sea when the boys were able to rush about in shorts, changing into swimming costumes among the rocks. She watched enviously the freedom of their limbs.

The restrictions were not confined to dress. At an age when the boys had been free to do as they liked, she had to spend hours with her mother on visits or helping at sales of work for the church, hanging around, bored. For the most part ignored, her only function was to be present as her absence would have been commented upon. The wider world opened up at school made the restrictions more intolerable, but there was no escape route.

And then it was shown to her; a broad and beckoning avenue. On a day she never forgot, Miss Lambert asked her to stay behind at the end of school. She asked her to sit down, talked for a moment about an essay she had just marked, and then said quite matter-of-factly, I think, Eglantine, you should consider taking a degree course in history, don't you?

For a moment she supposed, so casual was the voice, that it must be some kind of course of lessons she would take at school. Then the meaning of the words sank in. Oxford, Cambridge or London, your parents would naturally have ideas about this.

Certainly they would. They would never let her go, never. But she could not admit it to Miss Lambert.

But the exams? she said instead. I mean, isn't it difficult to get into Oxford?

Then Oxford would probably be your choice? Greek is still compulsory there. You would need it for Responsions, and you would have to take that next spring. Then there would be the Oxford Senior Certificate in July. Yes. It would be hard, and nobody has attempted it from here before.

She paused and looked searchingly at her. There has to be a first time, you know.

It was that remark which gave her courage. She realised with sudden humility that Miss Lambert, so quiet and unassuming, belonged to the great pioneers. The path that was opened to her would not have existed but for them. How could she refuse not to keep the highway open? Suddenly it was a nobler vision, better worth fighting for than a mere escape route.

I'll speak to my parents tonight, she said.

Her confidence began to ebb from the moment she saw the family Daimler waiting for her outside the Academy. It seemed to represent everything her mother desired for her. Green, the chauffeur, closed the heavy wooden door behind her and she sat imprisoned watching the streets of Throxton go by. By the time they reached the suburbs and turned up the winding drive of The Elms she had decided that she would say nothing about it until Edward came home in two days' time. He was bringing a friend, Christopher, with him, which would make it harder for her parents to be very angry with her. She knew she was being cowardly, not living up to the golden vision of the afternoon in Miss Lambert's study, but oh the house looked like a fortress.

Her mother was waiting for her in the hall.

You're very late today, Eglantine, she said. Had you forgotten we are taking tea with the Beavers? Lady Doughty, Mrs. Beaver's mother, is staying with them. Run along quickly and change.

Oh, but I have some preparing of lessons to do and...

Nonsense. All that sort of thing must be fitted into the schoolday. Come along, quickly now.

Half an hour later they were sitting in the Beavers' drawing room, old Lady Doughty propped up in the corner, her daughter sitting on the ottoman with Mrs. Thorpe. Alice, Mrs. Beaver's pretty daughter, sat next to Eglantine on a couch. A footman brought in cake stands and then the tea trolley laden with silver and all the paraphernalia of afternoon tea, including a little spirit stove. Her mother and Mrs. Beaver made adverse comments upon the new law to insure servants, for all the world as if the footman had not been in the room. Then Mrs. Beaver began to dispense tea.

You will be going to your first dance at the same time as Alice, Eglantine dear, Mrs. Beaver said, as she handed Eglantine the dainty china cup. Next year at the hunt ball.

Yes, indeed, her mother replied for her. How quickly time passes! Such a very few years since we were choosing layettes together and now it's time for ball gowns.

Her back was towards Eglantine, as she turned towards her hostess, who had returned to sit on the ottoman. How neatly her mother perched there, Eglantine thought, her slender waist still supple as a girl's.

I think, her mother was saying, that I might take Eglantine to London to choose her first ball gown. She will have left school by then, of course.

The room seemed to spin round; for the first time in her life Eglantine felt faint. She just had time to put down her tea cup before she felt herself slipping forward.

They all fluttered around her, her mother pleased that her daughter was at last behaving in a feminine manner. Should we loosen your stays? she heard her ask.

Perhaps it was the thought of this humiliation. Whatever the reason she made a disappointingly quick recovery. No, I'm all right, thank you, she said firmly. A drink will make me quite better, she added, reaching forward for her teacup, knocking over a sugar basin as she did so.

They insisted that she sat in a chair by the window, which she was glad to do as it relieved her of the need to join in the conversation. A maid swept up the sugar and they all resumed their seats and went on talking.

Have you heard, her mother enquired of Mrs. Beaver in a whisper so that the girls should not hear, that one of the staff – Miss Charles, I think, – was seen at a suffragette meeting?

No! Miss Lambert would never allow it.

Mrs. Braithwaite heard it in Parkes the Haberdashers.

How dreadful! It's as well our girls are leaving.

And what a time to choose, just when there are such dreadful reports from London.

The new act will soon put a stop to that. The one they call the 'cat-and-mouse act'.

Sometimes, Mrs. Beaver said with a sigh, I am glad the old Queen did not live to see it.

The old Queen, Eglantine reckoned, was probably glad too, considering she'd have been ninety-four.

She couldn't abide such women.

"I can't understand the attitude of suffragettes. It's as if they were ashamed of being women.''

I'm sure I've always been proud of it.

Quite.

"I did so agree with the rector's sermon. You remember he quoted those lines,

'The rights of women, what are they?

'The right to labour, love and pray.'"

Yes, it was a very noble sermon.

They were silent for a moment, dwelling on it. Eglantine, ears strained, listened from her chair by the window, her heart sinking lower and lower.

It would be too dreadful if the Academy was in any way tainted by this kind of thing, she heard her mother say.

We did once have cause to complain. Alice was doing so much of this mathematics Miss Charles teaches. I had to go and tell Miss Lambert there was no need. When Alice marries, her husband will do her accounts for her.

I've heard, her mother said, her voice almost inaudible, that Miss Charles has a relation who is a lady doctor.

No! In our day no gentleman became a doctor, let alone lady! Is that not so, Mama?

The question had to be repeated very loudly, for the old lady was deaf, but she understood at last and nodded vigorous assent. Doctors used the tradesmen's entrance, she said.

There have been so many changes since Miss Ferris' time, alas. I'm afraid the Academy isn't what it was.

But nothing is nowadays, is it? I mean all these strikes!

And the workers don't work properly any more, and nobody has any respect for authority the way they used to have.

Mrs. Beaver shook her head. The trouble starts in the schools, in my opinion, she said. That's why these changes at the Academy are so worrying. I think we've all been very patient about it.

Well, we must just be grateful it won't affect our daughters any more, her mother said, getting up. Come along, Eglantine, if you are quite recovered from your little indisposition.

They thanked their hostess, roared their farewells at old Lady Doughty, and departed in the Daimler.

Your mother wants me to write and give notice at the Academy, her father said at dinner. You'll be glad about that, won't you?

Oh no, Papa. I don't want to leave at all.

Well, three years ago you wanted to leave, it was no good to you, wasn't the Academy, and now you want to stay!

For a moment she hesitated, thinking that tomorrow Edward would be here. Then she drew a deep breath and said, Miss Lambert thinks I might be able to go to Oxford if I work hard.

Her mother looked at her with total disbelief. There were no words for the enormity of it. At length she said, She had no right to make such a wicked suggestion. Mr. Thorpe, I suggest Eglantine leaves the Academy forthwith. It has become a place of sedition.

Well, now, Elizabeth, I don't know about that. You've always said it had tone and Miss Lambert was a genteel sort of a person. But whatever did she mean about Oxford?

Women can go there, Papa. They can't be awarded degrees but they can study for them just the same.

The same as men, indeed! She must leave at once, Mr. Thorpe. She could go to a finishing school abroad for a year, except that one hears there are such problems about chaperones.

Oh, no, please.

Well now, Elizabeth, it seems to me she'd be safer in Oxford than in some foreign place. How would it be if she went there for her year instead?

It's a three-year course for a degree, Papa.

Well, but that's for men. One year would be enough for a woman.

He reached for a bismuth, dissolved it in water and sipped it judiciously.

It's hard to get there, Papa. I'd have to stay at the Academy for another year at least. That's the first thing.

I do not know if you have fully understood what she is saying,'' her mother said, pushing back her chair as she rose from the table. She is suggesting that she should stay at school studying instead of being presented to Throxton society next year. She will make us a laughing stock."

Don't distress yourself, Liz. Eglantine, you've upset your mother.

And I was making such plans for her. Her playing has improved, and though I cannot picture her singing at a soirée, I did hope she might play sometimes. She has a slender waist and would appear quite tolerable sitting playing with her back to our guests. I had thought of buying her a small grand piano for her birthday. There are some fashionable white ones in London, they say.

A white piano! her husband exclaimed.

Very expensive, but so elegant. And now all this ridiculous talk about Oxford and staying at school. I repeat she will make us all a laughing stock, a laughing stock.

As fate had once intervened in the shape of Miss Lambert to divert the stream of her life, it now intervened again, it seemed to Eglantine, just as unexpectedly, in the shape of the Honourable Christopher Mainwaring.

Christopher was one of Edward's Oxford friends and returned with him to stay the following day. Her mother had meanwhile taken no action about the academy as her father had been too much tortured by indigestion after dinner to be able to write the necessary letter.

Christopher had an ease and flippancy which she could see irritated her father, but impressed her mother. He was kind to Eglantine, even offering to drive her round in the motor car in which he had driven Edward back from Oxford. My sister goes in the back, he said, but you could sit beside me in the front, if you're brave enough.

You should have seen his old car, Edward said at dinner. Didn't even have a steering wheel, just a tiller.

You are interested in automobiles, Christopher? her mother asked politely.

I love them. A chap needs a hobby. You see I'm not brainy like Edward.

Brains aren't everything, she assured him.

Well, no but I envy him in a way, staying up for a higher degree, even if it is in a ghastly subject like military history. I like the place.

You'll go back for visits, perhaps?

Oh, yes, I'll do that. Besides, my sister's up there so I'll be going to see her.

"Your sister! ''

Yes. Didn't I tell you I had a sister, Mrs. Thorpe? Agnes is at Lady Margaret Hall.

Lady Margaret Hall?

Yes. You know there are does at Oxford now.

Does?

It was embarrassing the way her mother kept repeating everything he said.

Yes, it's what the chaps call women at Oxford.

Oh. Slang.

" 'Fraid so.''

She couldn't, mustn't, let this opportunity pass.

Miss Lambert thinks I should try for Oxford, Edward,she said as casually as she could.

He beamed at her. Eg! What absolutely splendid news. You clever thing!

Really, Eglantine, her mother cut in sharply. That is very naughty of you, considering that we settled the matter last night. Finally.

Settled, Mother?

Edward spoke with a restrained ferocity which was far more alarming than the loud furies of his schoolboy rages had been.

Yes, Edward,'' her mother replied after only a moment's hesitation. Eglantine will be coming out next year and will have plenty to occupy her time in Throxton."

Oh, but come now, Mrs. Thorpe, Christopher said jovially. "There is a world outside Throxton, you know.''

The plain, awkward-looking girl sitting opposite him turned on him such a look of glowing gratitude that he felt quite startled. Perhaps she wasn't so plain after all.

My sister could keep an eye on her, he went on recklessly.

I could visit them both, if you allowed it. Mind you, my father wouldn't have minded if Agnes hadn't got in – it's fearfully pricey. Something awful like fifteen guineas a term.

Mrs. Thorpe, to whom the naming of prices was an indication of ill-breeding, flinched slightly. To make it worse, her husband now said, Well, we're not short of a pound or two.

All the same, Papa, you've had the expense of my education, Edward put in wickedly, And Albert's, and William's. I quite see that one more is rather a lot to ask.

Rubbish, his father snapped, rising instantly to the bait. Nobody's going to say George Thorpe can't buy his daughter what she wants. Nobody.

All the same, four of them! Christopher drawled. My father only has the two of us to put through university and he's always grumbling over the bills, I can tell you.

George Thorpe glowered at this young man whose casual ways so riled him. Southern manners, he called them. If she wants to go to Oxford, he said recklessly disregarding his wife's attempts to stop him, she'll go. I've got the brass to send her.

We'll discuss it later, Mrs. Thorpe said. Come Eglantine we will leave the gentlemen to their port.

They did discuss it later, that evening and every other for a week, at the end of which they were all exhausted, and Mr. Thorpe's indigestion was worse than he could ever remember.

Finally a compromise was reached, by which Eglantine was to be allowed to stay at school and take her examinations, on condition that she behaved exactly like the other girls of her year, missing not one ball or dance, tea party or concert, soirée or even a sale of work. She agreed willingly, knowing that they were the best terms she would get.

Chapter Three

She had known it would be hard, but it was worse than she had feared. At school she lived in a world with different assumptions and ambitions from the world at home, and trying to reconcile those two worlds was more exhausting even than the work itself. On the very first day of the new term, for example, she was summoned to see Miss Lambert who sat at her tidy desk, composed and well organised as usual, and began to show her what her time-table would be. This is arranged around the Senior Local which you will take next summer, she said. Then you will take the Oxford examination the following March.

But I cannot do that, she had to admit. "My mother will only