Crooked Pieces Read Online Free PDF

them anchovy toasts, as well as stuffed pigeons’ eggs and meat pâté with mustard and lemon sherbert. I think maybe I should cease reading so many recipes to Cook as she is getting more and more wild in her endeavours and sometimes poor Mr Roe looks quite bilious when I put a dish in front of him.
    I asked her once what she thought the ladies talked of in their meetings and she screwed up her face and said it was mad things and not something I should be concerned with, but she is softer now since I gave her the jam pastries, and so I asked her over and over, and in the end she confessed that the meetings were all to do with votes. I was not overly sure what they might be, but Cook explained that men could choose who should govern them, but women could not. And Mrs Pankhurst and her daughters were foremost in protesting this. Then I thought back to how Miss Sylvia had asked me about brains, and it seemed to me that maybe she was not completely mad.
    Last evening a strange thing happened. I had taken in the spiced pork tartlets and kippered slices and was about to fetch more lemonade when a discussion amongst the ladies burst into quarrelling. I had taken no heed of the talk till all at once they grew so heated. Miss Christabel uttered something of working women, whereupon Mrs Despard (she who, I think, was once royal) said firmly, ‘But do you not see, Christabel, that these women are useless to the cause? They cannot reason, they cannot debate. They simply work, give birth and die. How can they advance us in any way?’
    Miss Christabel rose to her feet and looked Mrs Despard strong in the eye. ‘Without them we are nothing.’
    Then another lady with a very fine hat trickled her fingers into the air. ‘Christabel, think. Think how hard we have tried to persuade these creatures to stand by us. I agree with Mrs Despard. They are useless. They cannot think, they
will
not think. All our efforts are wasted in that area, as well you know.’
    There was a horrible silence, then Miss Sylvia who had not spoken till then, held up her hand. ‘I should like, if I may, to ask Maggie why she thinks it is that working women will not support our cause.’
    I felt quite sick, and held my peace, staring all the while at the tray I held. All fell quiet and I continued in silence, hoping mainly that I might die on the instant and so not have to answer.
    Miss Sylvia, seeing this, rose and came to my side. ‘It’s all right, Maggie. You have nothing to fear. These ladies would like to know why so few working women – women like your mother, perhaps – are not interested in furthering their rights.In making a better world for themselves and their children.’
    One of the ladies clapped. ‘Exactly. How can they not see how much their support is needed? Why are they so…feeble?’
    I looked at her, with her fine hat with soft grey feathers and thought about Ma with her yellow skin and the bruises rising from where Alfie kicked her.
    ‘I think, ma’am, perhaps they are very tired,’ I said.

    Miss Sylvia wishes me to attend the next ladies’ meeting. Cook looked very black when I told her and muttered about how was she to feed so many and make dinner for the master and mistress on her own? Was she a miracle worker? No. I said I would do all my work in time but still she rumbled on till I began to think it would be simpler to tell Miss Sylvia I could not go. I do not know that I would like it anyway. Particularly if I am to be questioned and held to account, but it is hard not to be a little interested for they are all such lively glittering souls; even Mrs Despard who looks as she could saw through iron with just one glance.
    It is my belief that Cook fears I will be persuaded to the ladies’ thinking, but how could I be since I understand nothing of it, apart from men being cleverer than elephants, but even that I wonder about, since the animal book said elephants could remember for a hundred years and I’m sure no man alive could