Kessie

Joyce Marlow

Description

An award winning story of the epic campaign for "Votes for Women " and a tempestuous love affair.....Kessie Thorpe, the daughter of a Manchester mill-owner is charming, innocent, eager. Sarah Whitworth hails from a tough, working class Lancashire background. Alice Hartley is a rich American, brought to England to find a titled husband, but headstrong Alice has other ideas. Their lives converge in 1905 when the three young women join the Pankhursts in the suffrage struggle. And join forces to get Sarah's charismatic brother Tom Whitworth elected as an MP for the newly formed Labour party.At the core of the novel is Kessie and Tom's stormy marriage, Alice's desire to bed Tom, and Sarah's disastrous foray into "free love". While Kessie struggles to find the balance between her personal life as wife and mother and what she sees as her public duty, Tom's attitude towards the wife he loves is a mixture of pride and an exasperation that leads him astray.Joyce Marlow draws on her extensive historical knowledge to depict the highs and lows of the suffrage campaign in a highly readable novel that has a surprising relevance to the problems that still face women in the twenty-first century.

Sujets

• Historical romance

Informations

• Publié par: eBookPartnership.com
• Date de parution: 11 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783010325
• Langue: English

Extrait

KESSIE
JOYCE MARLOW
* * *
2012 JOYCE MARLOW
Joyce Marlow has asserted her rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by ebookpartnership.com
First published and printed in 1985
First published in eBook format in 2013
eISBN: 978-1-78301-032-5
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
Ebook Conversion by www.ebookpartnership.com
for
JANET
WITH LOVE
And my thanks to Eve Avery for her computer skills and Colin Berry for his jacket design.
Contents
Part One
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part Two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Three
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part Four
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part One
Preface
At the end of April 1905, the following letter appeared in the correspondence columns of Manchester’s most famous newspaper:
To the Editor of the Manchester Guardian
Dear Sir,
I read twice through the report of the trial of Miss Lily Harrison, to confirm that my eyes had not deceived me upon their first reading; to confirm that in February last a thirteen-year-old child was found collapsed in the snow, with her dead babe not far from her side; to confirm that she was subsequently charged with infanticide; to confirm that she has now been sentenced to be hanged by the neck until she is dead.
Having twice digested this astonishing report, I asked myself whether I am a citizen of the proudest city of the Mother Country of the greatest Empire the world has ever known, a country which boasts of its ancient justice? Or had I, by some temporal trick as imagined by Mr Wells in The Time Machine, been transported into seventeenth-century Russia? For, Sir, I venture to assert that not even the present Czar and his despotic Government would have treated a thirteen-year-old child thus. I beg, Sir, that you will extend me the courtesy of your correspondence columns to announce the setting-up of a campaign to save the poor child from the hangman’s noose, to remove the stain that is disfiguring our city and our country by this monstrous travesty of the justice all true-born Britons cherish.
Donations will be gratefully received and should be sent to the following address: The Lily Harrison Defence Committee, c/o Messrs Thorpe and Company Limited, Portland Street, Manchester.
I am, Sir, Yours truly,
Charles W. Thorpe, The Laurels, Whalley Range.
1
With a glow of justified pride, Kessie Thorpe decided that her letter to the Manchester Guardian had definitely been a good one.
It was only just past midday but already the postman had delivered two sacks of mail to Papa’s Portland Street office. The room off the counting-house was awash with donations to the Lily Harrison Defence Fund, offerings both touchingly small and heart-warmingly large, piles of silver farthings, threepenny and sixpenny pieces, of shilling, one pound and even five pound notes.
To think that only a few days ago she had been having breakfast at The Laurels, while Papa who was a law unto himself, reading while he ate had been buried behind the Guardian , smooth from its ironing by the parlour maid, and Kessie had as usual been wondering what to do that day. Accept her friend Muriel’s invitation to attend the spring fashion show at the Midland Hotel, stay in town for luncheon and go on to the Ladies’ Concert in the afternoon? She had been thinking what a boring prospect that was, watching the sunlight break into rainbow hues as it filtered through the leaded lights of the breakfast-room windows, and wondering if life would be different when she was twenty-one and came into her inheritance, a day nine long months away, when Papa had suddenly let out a loud exclamation.
‘Jumping Jehosephat!’
This was his favourite expletive, uttered when his short-fuse temper or sense of outrage, or both, were about to explode, so Kessie had given him her full attention. In view of the newspaper report on Lily Harrison’s trial and sentence, it had been both and Papa’s bristly ginger moustache which slanted downwards, though not in a full walrus droop, had almost straightened with fury. People said he was ‘a card’, which was perhaps another way of saying he was unpredictable, always doing what he, not they, thought best and not in the least caring if he trod on tender corns, but Kessie had been very proud of him as he’d flung down his napkin and stormed off to organise the Lily Harrison Defence Committee.
She had followed, catching him in the hall. As he was so busy and she had so little to do, she had suggested that she might write the proposed letter to the Guardian. Somewhat to her surprise, Papa had agreed and she’d spent the best part of the day in her study high in the turret of The Laurels, filling a waste-paper basket with discarded pages as she’d tried to make the letter sound like Papa. In the evening, when he had returned from the office, he’d said the letter was first-rate and he particularly liked the reference to the despotic Czar, which Kessie had inserted especially because she knew the Czar was one of Papa’s many bêtes noires.
While they had been in the dining-room waiting for dinner to be served, Papa had told her that he was clearing the room off the counting-house at his Portland Street office to serve as the campaign headquarters, and that he had hired a barrister to deal with the legal aspects of the appeal for mercy. After the soup arrived, a brilliant idea had struck Kessie.
‘Shall I be in charge of the campaign?’
With a spoonful of mutton broth halfway to his mouth, Papa had paused, ‘Why not?’
And so now Kessie found herself sitting in the office, issuing instructions for acknowledgments of donations received to two of Papa’s lady clerks. How wonderful it was to have a purpose in life, and what a purpose, the saving of a thirteen-year-old child from the hangman’s noose!
In the middle of the afternoon, Kessie was having a well-earned cup of tea and nibbling at an Osborne biscuit when the telephone emitted its long insistent trills. Papa approved of the telephone and had had instruments installed here in the office, in the Thorpe family mill up in Mellordale, and also at The Laurels. Lifting the receiver from its hook, she held it close to her ear and said ‘Hello’ loudly into the mouthpiece. It was a good connection, the only-too-frequent cracklings and distortions were absent, and a pacily crisp female voice said, ‘My name is Christabel Pankhurst. To whom am I speaking?’
‘This is Miss Thorpe.’
‘Good afternoon, Miss Thorpe. I am telephoning on behalf of the Women’s Social and Political Union. As an organisation we are deeply shocked by the death sentence meted out to Lily Harrison and we wish to liaise closely with Mr Thorpe’s campaign to save the child’s life. I am myself studying law and will freely render any legal service I can.’
‘Oh, well, my father has already hired a barrister, Miss Pankhurst....’
‘I see.’ There was a slight pause of disappointment or annoyance? before the disembodied voice said briskly, ‘My mother and I have full appointment diaries until late tonight, but Miss Whitworth, who is one of our most able and experienced members, is free later this afternoon. Will it be convenient if she calls at your father’s office at, say, five-thirty?’
‘Well, yes, I think so....’
‘Good. We look forward to a successful outcome of our joint efforts to save that wretched, ill-used child. Thank you for your assistance, Miss Thorpe.’
Putting the receiver back in its cradle, Kessie wished she was as coolly composed as Miss Pankhurst! She knew the Pankhurst name vaguely, from the papers. When her father next strode into the office she told him that a Miss Whitworth would be here at five-thirty, on behalf of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
‘And who might they be?’
Kessie had no idea but she hazarded a guess. ‘I think it’s run by Mrs Pankhurst.’
‘Doctor Pankhurst’s widow? If she intends to do anything for women, socially or politically, she’ll need to have more about her than he had. Good chap but head stuffed with Utopian nonsense. But I’ve no objection to seeing the young woman.’ Papa smiled. ‘Mustn’t ignore the ladies’ contribution, eh?’
The rest of the afternoon flew past like an express train and at five-thirty precisely Papa ushered in a young woman. Without staring, which would have been rude, Kessie regarded Miss Whitworth curiously. She was tiny, her skin was unusually dark, a brown tam-o’-shanter sat on her upswept jet-black hair, and the overall impression she gave was of an alert little blackbird. After the introductions had been made, Papa looked quizzically down at her. ‘You’re very small to be representing the Women’s Social and Political Union, Miss Whitworth.’
‘Size has nothing to do with strength of purpose, Mr Thorpe.’
‘What is your purpose, pray?’ If there had been a hint of condescension in Papa’s voice, it was gone now.
‘We want the vote for women on the same terms as it exists for men, so that as acknowledged equals we may take our rightful place in the world and turn our attention to the many demanding social issues, such as why innocent thirteen-year-old girls have babies and are driv