Storm and Silence Read online

  ‘Err… yes. Yes, I am,’ I stuttered. ‘You just surprised me, Sir. I must admit,’ I added truthfully, ‘that it’s not every day I get an offer like that.’

  ‘See that you’re not “surprised” too often when you are in my employ,’ he said without moving a muscle of his angular, stony face. ‘I have no use for baffled fools standing around gawking for no good reason.’

  Fools, was it? His capacity for politeness seemed about equal to his ability to force a smile on that statue’s face of his. I had a sudden, mad urge to ask him what he thought about point number four. Maybe it really had been him…

  Again, he stepped closer and jerked his hand forward.

  ‘My card,’ he said, his voice curt and commanding. Only then did I notice what he was holding out to me: a small rectangular piece of cardboard. I took it and examined it. In clear, precise lettering without any embellishments were printed the words:

  Rikkard Ambrose

  Empire House

  322 Leadenhall Street

  Nothing else. No titles, no embellishments, no profession.

  I looked up at him again. Ambrose, hm? Like the stuff the Greek gods used to eat for breakfast? Well, he certainly looked good enough to eat, I thought as my eyes swept up and down his lean form appreciatively.

  No! What was I thinking? I didn’t want or need men. I didn’t need anyone who thought my brain was too small to understand politics, thank you very much! I was a proud suffragette[2] and should be thinking about promoting women’s rights, not the contents of men’s tights! Did men even wear tights under their trousers? I would have to ask my twin sisters about that. They would probably know from personal experience.

  ‘Don’t be late,’ he added, his dark eyes flaring. ‘I don't tolerate tardiness.’ Then, without a further word, he turned and vanished into the fog, his long black cloak flapping behind him. The others who surrounded him silently followed, as if he were the centre of their little solar system and they all revolved around him. I stared after him, flabbergasted.

  The nerve of the man! He didn’t even wait to hear me say yes or no? He just left, expecting I would do his bidding. Who was he? Some industrialist with too much money for his own good? No, that didn’t fit the cut and colouring of his clothes, which was very simple: sleek black from head to toe. So was he just a simple tradesman? But then again… He had all those attendants with him. That suggested someone important.

  Maybe he was a government official. I snorted, staring intently at the card. Yes, that would fit! One of those fellows who were to blame for me being out here in this strange getup in the first place. I should just chuck his card away and be done with it. It wasn’t as if I intended to go there on Monday.

  I hesitated for a moment.

  Then I pocketed the card and turned to the polling station again.

  Why was I feeling so annoyed? I should be happy. This had been an excellent test. I had been in the company of one of the most masculine men I had ever met, and he hadn’t noticed I was in fact a girl. Great job!

  Yet, deep down, I knew exactly why I was peeved. It was because I had been in the company of the most masculine man I had ever met and he had completely, I mean absolutely and completely, not noticed that I was in fact a girl!

  Be sensible, I chided myself. A moment ago you were worried about looking too feminine. Now you’ve been proven wrong. Problem solved.

  Yes.

  There was definitely no reason for me to feel annoyed. No reason at all.

  Banishing all thoughts of the strange Mr Rikkard Ambrose from my mind, I again started towards the building at the end of the street. The fog lifted slightly and revealed the menacing figure of a police officer posted outside the door. Sweat broke out on my forehead despite the cold, and for a moment I was convinced he was stationed there for the express purpose of catching young ladies daring to try and vote against the supreme will of the British Government.

  Then I remembered he was probably not there for the women, but for the millions of men who still weren’t allowed to vote either, because they didn’t have a penny in their pocket. Women were probably not even important enough to be taken into consideration. Well, I would show them!

  As I walked up the steps to the front door, the bobby took off his hat respectfully. ‘Good day, Sir.’

  Oh God! He’d lifted his hat in greeting. Why hadn’t I thought of this? What should I do? Take off my hat in return? I couldn’t do that, considering the mass of hair that was piled up underneath it like a haystack crammed into a shopping bag. So I just nodded silently. Better to be thought rude than to be polite and subsequently arrested.

  Quickly I pushed past the bobby and threw open the door to the polling station. A thick stench of cigars and sweat wafted towards me out of the darkness.

  My hands clenched into tight fists, and I stood there, immobile. Could I do this? Was I brave enough? Would I get caught? Would I get lynched by an outraged male mob?

  Before I could think better of it, I plunged forward, into the darkness, towards my goal.

  *~*~**~*~*

  For a moment, I stood still while my eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom. Slowly, shapes appeared out of the dark, and I could distinguish a sort of counter at the other end of the room, where an official sat with several lists and thick books. Men formed a line in front of the counter. They scribbled something in the books with a fountain pen, then bowed to the official and departed.

  Was I supposed to write in there, too? I had no idea how this ‘voting’-thing actually worked. Oh heavens, I should never have tried this…

  Come on, I chastised myself. Do it! Do it for your friends, Patsy, Flora and all the rest! Do it for the oppressed masses of women who are too lazy to protest themselves! Do it against all those arrogant male chauvinists who think the brains of a woman wouldn’t fill a tea spoon!

  Unfortunately, this last thought brought a certain image to my mind: the image of Mr Rikkard Ambrose as he disdainfully handed his card to his new ‘secretary’.

  Was I really so ugly that a man like him would not even recognize me as a girl? I refused to believe so! Admittedly, my skin was rather tanned, and my face was rather round with a perky chin, not at all demure and ladylike. But still, not even to recognize me as a girl…?

  Forget about him. He’s not important. You have a job to do! I repeated over and over in my mind. Still, the image of Rikkard Ambrose persisted in front of my inner eye as I approached the line of men at the counter.

  Just before I could get into line, a thin little man in a bright yellow waistcoat stopped me. Or maybe he was a woman in disguise, too? How should I know, after all?

  ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ he said in a voice high enough to make the theory at least possible. ‘You will have to show me your passport.’

  Ah! I breathed a sigh of relief. At least this was one eventuality I had provided for. At a dinner party, I had heard the gentlemen once talking about the government introducing this measure: you had to show your passport when you voted, to prove who you were.

  So how could I try and vote, you may ask yourself?

  Well, I had pinched my uncle’s passport.

  Why not? I had already taken his trousers, jacket, waistcoat and top hat. And it wasn’t like he was going to vote. He never left his room except to work or complain about things.

  ‘Um… of course. Here.

  With fluttering fingers I removed the rectangular piece of paper from my pocket and unfolded it. The little man took it and looked at it without really paying attention.

  ‘In his Majesty’s name… Passport for the person of the name Bufford Jefferson Brank… signed by… and so on and so on… yes, all appears to be in order.’ He handed the document back to me, and I quickly tugged it back into my pocket. ‘Please continue, Mr Brank,’ he said, gesturing towards the line of waiting men and already looking somewhere else, having lost all interest in yours truly.

  That was fine by me.

  Hurriedly, I placed myself behin
d the last man in the line, thanking the Lord that the British government hadn’t yet adopted the practice of putting pictures of people in passports. I might be able to pass for a man by putting on a pair of trousers and a top hat, but I doubted I would be able to pass for a grumpy sixty-year-old by availing myself of a false white beard and pretending to limp.

  ‘Next, please,’ the man at the counter called in a bored voice. The line moved forward, and I moved along with it, step by step, voter by voter. In that way, I slowly approached the counter, getting more nervous with every passing minute. How exactly did you 'cast a vote'? Did you actually have to throw something? I presumed it was only a figure of speech, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

  The men before me didn’t seem to be throwing things around, though. They just bent as if to write something down, and then went away. That didn’t look so bad.

  Suddenly, the last man in front of me stepped aside and I was facing the official behind the counter. He held out a piece of paper, on which the names of two candidates were printed with little circles beside them.

  ‘Cast your vote, please,’ he said, his voice still dripping boredom.

  ‘What?’ I stared at the man, surprised. ‘Do you mean anyone will be able to see who I voted for?’

  He looked at me as if I had just asked whether the sea was really made out of water. ‘Of course. If you’re ashamed of your political affiliations, you shouldn’t be here. Haven’t you voted before?’

  Trying desperately not to let my nerves show, I shook my head. ‘No. First time.’

  ‘Oh, well, that explains it.’ His expression changed from bored to superior, and he pointed to a place on the paper. ‘We vote publicly here, young man. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. You’ll get none of those absurd new political ideas the Chartists are proposing in my polling station. Did you know those fools don't just want to have secret ballots, they actually demand universal suffrage?’

  ‘Incredible.’

  ‘Just what I said! This is a decent, British polling station, young man. Everybody who comes here to vote is a gentleman with a residence in town and a good income, and everybody sees who everybody else votes for.’

  He paused, and I, as was obviously expected, nodded my agreement to his political wisdom. The official seemed pleased. He tapped on the paper in front of me.

  ‘Just make your mark there, or there, young Sir, depending on which candidate you wish to vote for.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’ I grabbed the fountain pen and immediately made my mark for the Whig candidate.

  ‘The Whigs, hmm?’

  The official’s face soured, and he glanced at me disapprovingly. ‘Didn’t you hear what I was just saying? The Whigs actually support those Chartist extremists and rebels who want votes for the common people. Do you really know what you are doing, young man? Those infernal reformers will be the death of our great country, some day!’

  ‘Well, we'll just have to see, won’t we, Sir,’ I said with a smile and curtsied.

  The entire room went suddenly deadly quiet as everybody turned to stare at me. The voters, the officials, even a fellow in the corner who looked like he had just come in to warm himself up a bit - they all stared at me with open mouths.

  What was the matter with them?

  Then I realized. Oh, blast! I curtsied! I didn’t bow, I curtsied!

  *~*~**~*~*

  They needed to call a second police officer to ‘restrain the madwoman in the polling station’ as the government official put it to the messenger boy who was sent to the police. The boy was obviously impressed with my performance, because he returned not with one, but with three additional Bobbies, truncheons in hand.

  Now don't get me wrong, I didn’t try to strangle anybody. Far from it. I simply had decided that since I was discovered anyway, I might as well use the opportunity and set up an impromptu demonstration for women’s rights in the polling station. The government officials in charge of the place didn’t seem to take kindly to the idea.

  Thus it was that at 9:30 am on 22 August 1839 I was dragged out of an inconsequential polling station in the middle of London, with the firm assistance of four protectors of the people. Two of the officers held my arms, while another two marched ahead to warn any passers-by of the dangerous madwoman.

  ‘Chauvinists!’ I yelled. ‘Oppressors of womanhood!’

  One of the Bobbies winced, covering his ears.

  ‘Can we gag her?’ he asked his sergeant.

  ‘No, lad, that’s against regulations,’ the older man grunted.

  ‘What about a straitjacket?’

  ‘We ain’t got one of those, more’s the pity.’

  Digging my heels into the ground, I continued to express my opinion of the oppressors of womanhood in no uncertain terms. To my considerable satisfaction they had a great deal of trouble moving me five inches, let alone down the steps from the doors of the polling station.

  We had just reached the last porch step when out of the bank on the opposite side of the misty street stepped a figure I remembered all too well: Rikkard Ambrose, his classical features as hard as ever, his black cloak wrapped tightly around him. When he caught sight of me being dragged away, he stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Officer!’ In three long strides he was in front of us. His face was just as unmoving as before, but there was a steely glint in his dark eyes. ‘Officer, what are you doing with this young man, may I ask?’

  The sergeant turned, and paled as he saw the visage of the much younger man. He took one hand off my arm to salute. My, my. Mr Rikkard Ambrose had to be someone of importance to elicit that kind of reaction from one of London’s stoic defenders of the law.

  I tried to use the opportunity to wrestle free, but immediately the sergeant stopped saluting and clapped his hand around my arm again.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Ambrose, Sir!’ he said, trying to stand at attention while not loosening his grip on yours truly. ‘Um… Sir, if I may ask, what young man are you speaking of?’

  With a sharp jerk of his hand, Mr Ambrose pointed at me.

  ‘That one, of course. Are you blind? What are you doing with him?’

  ‘Not him, Sir.’ Reaching up, the sergeant gripped my top hat and pulled it off, so my chestnut bob cut was freed and tumbled downwards. ‘Her. That’s a girl, Mr Ambrose, Sir.’

  The expression on the face of Mr Rikkard Ambrose at that moment was quite possibly the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life. His stone face slackened and he gaped at me like he hadn’t seen a single female before in his entire life.

  ‘Something wrong, Sir?’ the sergeant inquired, dutifully. When no answer was forthcoming from the stupefied Mr Ambrose, the sergeant shrugged, and made an awkward little bow. ‘Well, if you’d excuse us, Sir, we have to take this one,’ he nodded at me like he would at a rabid horse, ‘away to where she belongs. Maybe a night in the cells will teach her not to do what’s only for men.’

  ‘Aye,’ one of the constables chuckled. ‘Women voting? Who ever heard of something like that? Next thing we know they’ll want decent jobs!’

  His colleagues laughed at his joke and started dragging me to a police coach standing not twenty yards away.

  In that moment, I made a decision.

  I turned my head around to look back. Mr Rikkard Ambrose still stood there, pale and unmoving as a block of ice. Even though he was already a dozen yards away, and the Bobbies dragged me further and further, I could see his stone face very clearly. I could see his dark eyes starting to burn with cold anger. A grin spreading across my face, I yelled:

  ‘Looking forward to seeing you at work on Monday, Sir!’

  Ape Bobby

  By the next morning I didn’t feel quite so cocky anymore. That might have had something to do with spending the night in a prison cell, or with the fact that I had made a total mess of my plan, or with the fact that I hadn’t been able to get myself calmed down enough to sleep until midnight.

  And when I finally did fall asleep on the har
d, uneven bunk bed in the prison cell, I dreamed of a dozen Bobbies, reinforced by a whole platoon of Ancient Greek statues, chasing me through the dark streets of London all night, shouting: ‘Stop her! Stop the feminist! She has to be at work on Monday! At nine sharp! Catch her!’ I’m not sure which was more disturbing, the horrifying chase or the fact that the stone statues on my tail looked suspiciously like Mr Rikkard Ambrose.

  I awoke sometime around three am, my heart hammering so fast I knew I would never be able to go to sleep again.

  Instead, I surveyed the luxurious hotel suite the nice policemen had put me in for the night: six square feet of the best of what London’s police stations had to offer. The walls of my temporary home were decorated in an intricate pattern of mould and graffiti. The panorama window - about two square feet covered with a beautiful set of iron bars - offered a spectacular view over the gutter of one of London’s finest dingy alleyways. The door, of course, was designed to fit the standards of the window and was similarly crafted from highly decorative iron bars. The bed, as my back could attest, was also made to fit the highest standards, and was able to reduce your back muscles to a tangle of aching knots within five minutes. All in all, it was a breath-taking place with a charming atmosphere. The previous tenant had even left me a little present in the form of a puddle of well-matured goo in the corner. It emitted the most delicious, stomach-turning odour and completed the whole ambience to misery in perfection. The pale light of the moon which filtered in through the small window didn’t make the scene any cheerier.

  At least there was no one else in the cell with me. The policemen had put me in solitary confinement. I would have liked to think that was for my protection, but truth be told, they probably thought it was safer for the other prisoners. After all, they couldn’t want those poor misunderstood thieves, burglars and murderers in the same cell as a raving madwoman who had dressed up as a man and thus had given proof of the fact that she had absolutely no morals whatsoever, could they?

  Groaning, I shuffled until I was sitting on the bunk, my chin resting in my open palm. A truly philosophical position, ideally suited for pondering my fate. What would be my punishment for my little subterfuge? Would I be sent to prison for daring to defy the laws of England? Or put in the stocks? Or transported to the colonies like a common thief?[3] That last thought cheered me up considerably. I had heard that some of the colonies were much more civilized and advanced when it came to the independence of women than our dear mother country. Plus, my aunt and uncle would then be a few thousand miles away from me.