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Ethel caught a bus. It was two stops, but she was too tired to walk.
The meeting was at the Calvary Gospel Hall, the place where Lady Maud had her clinic. Ethel had come to Aldgate because it was the only district of London she had ever heard of, Maud having mentioned the name many times.
The hall was lit by cheerful gas mantels along the walls, and a coal stove in the middle of the room took the chill off the air. Cheap folding chairs had been put out in rows facing a table and a lectern. Ethel was greeted by the branch secretary, Bernie Leckwith, a studious, pedantic man with a good heart. Now he looked worried. "Our speaker has canceled," he said.
Ethel was disappointed. "What are we going to do?" she asked. She looked around the room. "You've already got more than fifty people here. "
"They're sending a substitute, but she's not here yet, and I don't know if she'll be any good. She's not even a party member. "
"Who is it?"
"Her name is Lady Maud Fitzherbert. " Bernie added disapprovingly: "I gather she's from a coal-owning family. "
Ethel laughed. "Fancy that!" she said. "I used to work for her. "
"Is she a good speaker?"
"I've no idea. "
Ethel was intrigued. She had not seen Maud since the fateful Tuesday when Maud had married Walter von Ulrich and Britain had declared war on Germany. Ethel still had the dress Walter had bought her, carefully wrapped in tissue paper and hanging in her wardrobe. It was pink silk with a gauzy overdress, and it was the most beautiful thing she had ever owned. Of course she could not fit into it now. Besides, it was too good for wearing to a Labour Party meeting. She still had the hat, too, in the original box from the shop in Bond Street.
She took her seat, grateful to get the weight off her feet, and settled to wait for the meeting to begin. She would never forget going to the Ritz, after the wedding, with Walter's handsome cousin, Robert von Ulrich. Walking into the restaurant she had been the focus of hard looks from one or two of the women, and she guessed that, even though her dress was expensive, there was something about her that marked her as working class. But she hardly cared. Robert had made her laugh with catty comments about the other women's clothing and jewelry, and she had told him a bit about life in a Welsh mining town, which seemed stranger to him than the existence of the Eskimos.
Where were they now? Both Walter and Robert had gone to war, of course, Walter with the German army and Robert with the Austrian, and Ethel had no way of knowing whether they were dead or alive. She knew no more about Fitz. She presumed he had gone to France with the Welsh Rifles, but was not even sure of that. All the same, she scanned the casualty lists in the newspapers, fearfully looking for the name Fitzherbert. She hated him for the way he had treated her, but all the same she was deeply thankful when his name did not appear.
She could have remained in contact with Maud, simply by going to the Wednesday clinic, but how would she have explained her visit? Apart from a minor scare in July-a little spotting of blood in her underwear that Dr. Greenward had assured her was nothing to worry about-she had had nothing wrong with her.
However, Maud had not changed in six months. She walked into the hall as spectacularly well dressed as ever, in a huge wide-brimmed hat with a tall feather that stuck up out of the hatband like the mast of a yacht. Suddenly Ethel felt shabby in her old brown coat.
Maud caught her eye and came over. "Hello, Williams! Forgive me, I mean Ethel. What a lovely surprise!"
Ethel shook her hand. "You'll excuse me if I don't get up," she said, patting her distended belly. "Just now I don't think I could manage to stand up for the king. "
"Don't even think about it. Can we find a few minutes to chat after the meeting?"
"That would be lovely. "
Maud went to the table, and Bernie opened the meeting. Bernie was a Russian Jew, like so many inhabitants of London's East End. In fact few East Enders were plain English. There were lots of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish. Before the war there had been many Germans; now there were thousands of Belgian refugees. The East End was where they got off the ship, so naturally they settled there.
Although they had a special guest, Bernie insisted on first going through apologies for absence, the minutes of the previous meeting, and other tedious routines. He worked for the local council in the libraries department, and he was a stickler for detail.
At last he introduced Maud. She spoke confidently and knowledgeably about the oppression of women. "A woman doing the same job as a man should be paid the same," she said. "But we are often told that the man has to support a family. "
Several men in the audience nodded emphatically: that was what they always said.
"But what about the woman who has to support a family?"
This brought murmurs of agreement from the women.
"Last week in Acton I met a girl who is trying to feed and clothe her five children on two pounds a week, while her husband, who has run off and left her, is earning four pounds ten shillings making ships' propellers in Tottenham, and spending his money in the pub!"
"That's right!" said a woman behind Ethel.
"Recently I spoke to a woman in Bermondsey whose husband was killed at Ypres-she has to support his four children, yet she is paid a woman's wage. "
"Shame!" said several women.
"If it's worth the employer's while to pay a man a shilling apiece to make gudgeon pins, it's worth his while to pay a woman at the same rate. "
