Make More Noise! Read online

  FOREWORD

  My older child was able to vote for the first time in the last election, and took a lot of pride in it. This brought home to me the importance of being able to vote, and when I discovered that the centenary of the date on which the first British women were given the vote was coming up, I thought that it deserved recognition.

  And it was that idea which led to this book, Make More Noise. We decided to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage by creating a collection of brand new short stories by some of our favourite women writers, celebrating interesting and inspiring female characters.

  Some of these stories have been inspired by real people and events from history, and others are entirely imagined, but what they all share is a celebration of girls and women at the centre of their own stories − in all kinds of different ways.

  From Sally Nicholls’ re-imagining of the night of the 1911 census, on which many women hid from their homes as a protest against their lack of voting rights, to Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s magical parable of a world that’s been flooded by a sea of witch’s tears, there is something here for everyone. There are ghost stories, fairy tales, stories set in the present day, and stories set over a hundred years ago. Stories that will make you laugh, make you cry, make you think, and make you cheer.

  We’re so proud of the incredible collection of authors who have contributed to Make More Noise, and of the stories they have written.

  And we’re also especially happy to be partnering with Camfed for this book. Camfed is an international charity tackling poverty and inequality by supporting marginalized girls to go to school and succeed, and empowering young women to step up as leaders of change, and it felt particularly appropriate to be able to support these efforts with a book celebrating inspiring girls and women: £1 from the sale of every copy of Make More Noise will go directly to Camfed.

  In the speech from which this book takes its name, Emmeline Pankhurst said: “You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under.”

  We hope that this book inspires you to make more noise.

  Kate Wilson, Managing Director, Nosy Crow

  February 2018

  The boys say it’s jolly well not fair, and why should us girls have all the fun, and couldn’t they come too? But Mummy says no. Tonight is for the women. Mummy and Enid and me, and Cook and Gladys and Miss Norcote, if they’d like to come.

  Miss Norcote is our governess. Gladys is the maid. Gladys says, not likely! Not that she wouldn’t like a vote, but she’s that tired after a day’s work, she’s not about to go and sleep in a field to get it, thank you very much. But Cook says she’s game, and so, rather surprisingly, does Miss Norcote. Miss Norcote is old – much older than Mummy and Daddy – and rather prim and buttoned-up-tight, so even Mummy’s a bit taken aback when she says she’d like to come. But of course, Mummy just smiles and says that would be wonderful.

  Mummy’s a suffragette and so are Enid and I – or we would be, only there’s not much call for suffragetting in Peasecombe, which is the village where we live. I do think it’s unfair. In York and Leeds and London and places like that, suffragettes have a jolly old time of it going on marches, and throwing stones through shop windows, and getting flung into gaol. But there aren’t any marches in Peasecombe, and there’re only three shops, and we can’t very well throw stones through their windows because they all know who we are, and if we started doing things like that we wouldn’t have anywhere to buy bread, which would be dashed inconvenient. So mostly Mummy is just the sort of suffragette who writes letters to MPs and argues with Granny at Christmas.

  But not today.

  Tonight, April the second, 1911, is the census. That means the government wants to count how many people there are in Britain, just like in the Bible when Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to be counted, only here you stay in a house and you’re counted there. But the suffragettes say that if women don’t count in elections, we’re jolly well not going to let them count us in the census either. So the idea is that women all over Britain aren’t going to be in a house on census night, and that’ll muck up the count and give the government no end of a headache.

  Mummy has a subscription to Votes for Women, which is a newspaper, and it’s full of all the things women are going to do tonight instead of stay at home. They’ve hired ice rinks and they’re going to have all-night skating parties, and sleep in coal sheds, and go off in gypsy caravans, and stay up all night reading plays in secret locations, and go walking on the moors, and do all sorts of things. There’s even going to be an all-night concert for census-dodgers in Trafalgar Square. We haven’t got anything like that in Peasecombe, of course, but Mummy says we’re going to have a private protest. We’re going to take our tents and pitch them on Ennesthwait Ridge, and we’re going to cook our dinner on an open fire, and stay out till morning.

  Enid and I think it’s a topping way to protest.

  “Just think if everyone did it!” says Enid. “That’d be one in the eye for the rotten old government! They’d have to give us a vote then.”

  Census night is a Sunday. We spend the morning fetching the camping things from the outhouse and packing them up into haversacks and the handcart. A few people stare as we walk through the village, but not many; we’re always doing queer things in our family, so they’re rather used to us.

  As it comes out the other side of the village, the road begins to climb. After really not very long at all, you come to the edge of the woods, and almost immediately there’s this little dirt track with a wooden signpost that says ENNESTHWAIT RIDGE, THE MOORS, like the ridge is a person and that’s its address. As soon as we get under the trees, I feel excitement quickening in me. I look at Enid, and I know she feels it too. It’s like we’ve left the village behind at last and the adventure’s begun.

  The track goes straight up the hill, and very quickly it stops being an adventure and starts being hard work. Ennesthwait Ridge isn’t exactly high – I mean, we’ve been climbing it since we were little people of three or four – but this time, of course, we’ve got tents, and blankets, and food, and toothbrushes, and Enid’s and my bicycle lamps (Mummy has an electric torch, oh, lucky, lucky Mummy), and pyjamas, and clean stockings, and matches, and the frying pan, and the little camping kettle, and tea towels, and dishcloths, and really, given that we’re only staying one night, it’s a beastly lot of things. Mummy and Cook take one of the handcart’s handles each, and the rest of us put our backs to it, and it’s push – push – push all the way up.

  All the really heavy things are in the cart, of course, but we all have haversacks with our night things in them. We don’t have much, but it’s astonishing how much harder climbing is with things on your backs. It’s also cold, though we quickly warm up with all the climbing. I hope we’ll be all right tonight. Mummy’s packed simply heaps and heaps of blankets, and if Captain Scott can camp in Antarctica, I suppose we can in April in Yorkshire. Even so, I’m beginning to worry a bit.

  But then I remember the suffragettes like Mrs Pankhurst who go to prison and suffer all sorts of horrible torments, and I tell myself not to be such a weed.

  It is ever such a beastly lot of up, though.

  “Why do we have to camp here?” Enid wails.

  Mummy looks a bit sheepish and says, “Oh, darling, I am sorry. I just thought it would be rather jolly, that’s all. Daddy and Uncle James and I spent a night up here once – we lit a fire and stayed up all night until the sun rose. I thought we might pitch in the same place.”

  This, of course, puts all the climbing in a different l
ight. “Rather!” I say.

  And Enid says,

  “Oh, won’t the boys be sore they missed this?”

  The side of Ennesthwait Ridge is mostly wooded. But then you come out on to the top, and it’s moor as far as you can see, all purpley-green in summer and simply humming with bees. The path comes out of the wood and takes a sharp left along the side of the moor, and there’s a little open space with rocks, and a bench, and a view of Peasecombe and all the valley spreading out beneath you. It’s an A1 place to camp.

  Usually when we camp, it’s just the boys and Enid and me, in the wood at Grandfather’s house in summer. We have two tents; one for Cecil and Nicholas and one for us girls. Miss Norcote and Cook will sleep in the boys’ tent, but…

  “Where are you going to sleep, Mummy?” says Enid. Mummy looks rather awkward.

  “Well,” she says. “I didn’t exactly expect Miss Norcote and Cook to want to come. But don’t worry about me. I’m going to get a big lot of wood together and sit up by the fire like Daddy and Uncle James and I did. That way I won’t be worrying about how cold you all are.”

  “I say!” says Enid. “Are you really? May Jean and I stay up too?”

  “Yes, may we?” I say.

  Mummy hesitates. “Oh…” she says. “Well…”

  “It would save us all heaps of work if we didn’t have to make up palliasses,” I say.

  Palliasses are sort of big bag things that you take camping, and you fill them up with straw or something, and then you’ve got something soft to sleep on.

  Mummy smiles. “I think we’ll make up the palliasses anyway,” she says. “Then they’ll be there if you change your minds.”

  But Enid and I know we won’t.

  Have you ever been camping? It’s the most ripping fun, but it’s a frightful lot of work. First you have to put the tents up. Then you fill the palliasses. Ours are made of sacking, and we fill them with heather. Heather is simply the most glorious thing in the world to have in your bed, especially in summer. It’s all springy and bouncy and it has the most heavenly honey-y smell. If I was a millionaire, I’d fill up all my mattresses with it, and sleep on it every night.

  Mummy and Cook put up the tents, then go to help Miss Norcote cut the heather. Enid and I gather simply heaps of firewood and pile it up in a great big stack. Then we go help Mummy stuff the palliasses. But even then we aren’t done.

  Miss Norcote gets the sheets and blankets out of the handcart and makes up the beds.

  Mummy sits down with a knife to cut a square of turf where we’ll have the fire. Enid and I find two big forked sticks. Mummy drives them into the ground, one on either side of the fireplace, and we lay another big long stick across them like a medieval spit, so we can hang the kettle over the flames.

  “Time for a cup of tea, I think,” says Mummy, and she sends me running down to the beck to fill the kettle.

  Oh, it is lovely, sitting there with the little yellow flames dancing in the fireplace, drinking tea and eating squares of Dairy Milk and looking out at Peasecombe and the fields all laid out like The Land of Counterpane. And isn’t it funny seeing Miss Norcote sitting there on a boulder with her face all red from the heather-cutting and palliasse-stuffing, and a long streak of mud on her skirts? And Cook with her hat all askew, saying, “Eh… now this is a treat!”

  I do like Cook. She’s small and skinny, and full of tremendous energy. I do think it’s ripping she’s a suffragette.

  We let the fire burn down, and then we start to cook. The older a fire is, the hotter it gets – did you know that? You want that deep, dark-red glow to cook on, not the early yellow flames. We push potatoes into the embers and we fry the sausages in the frying pan. We eat them with salt and mustard and lots of butter, and they’re glorious, the very best sort of outdoor food, ever so much nicer than dull old sandwiches in packets of greaseproof paper. We finish up with a treacle tart that Cook made this morning and then we do the washing up. I’m frightfully glad Cook packed the washing-up bowl and some soap flakes twisted up in a bit of paper, because I never, never would have, and we’d have been scuppered without them. Then Mummy chucks a whole lot more wood on to the fire, and it throws up all these sparks, and it’s just A1, and I wish we could eat on an open fire every day, like Taffimai’s family do in the Just So Stories.

  It’s still cold, but it’s much warmer sitting by the fire. We watch the sun set over the village.

  It’s ever so queer to think of all those families down there eating boring everyday suppers inside, while we’re up here, swizzing the census and fighting for votes for women.

  Miss Norcote says, “It’s going to be dark soon, girls, so you’d better wash and brush your teeth while there’s still light.”

  Enid tries to tell her we don’t need to get ready for bed, since we aren’t going to bed, but she should know it’s no earthly use arguing with Miss N. We’ve left it a bit late, but Miss Norcote has Mummy’s electric torch, and Enid and I have our bicycle lamps, which we light from a splint from the fire. We take the soapy, tooth-powdery water down to the beck, tip it out and hurry back. Even just in the time it’s taken to wash, it’s got so much darker. You can’t really see the village houses now, just the lights from the street lamps and the house windows. There are the lights of Peasecombe, then great acres of blackness, which are fields and woods, then further out across the valley you can see the house lights of farmhouses and shepherds’ huts, then right on the horizon there’s the dull glow of Ennesthwait town.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. It is.

  “Are we really going to stay up all night?” says Enid, and Mummy says we are. “Even Miss Norcote and Cook?” I say, and they look at each other.

  “Well…” says Miss Norcote. “I’m not sure…”

  “I’m not,” says Cook. “Votes for women is all well and good, but I need my beauty sleep. I’m sure you don’t expect me to cook for nine tomorrow on no sleep, ma’am, because I tell you now, it ain’t going to happen.”

  And Mummy laughs and says of course she doesn’t, and she’s ever so grateful that Cook’s even come at all.

  It’s half past eight, which is past Enid’s bedtime already, but it’s still quite early for the grown-ups, of course. Anyway, no one wants to go to bed just yet. We’re all wrapped up in blankets, and winter coats, and hats and gloves and scarves, and two pairs of stockings, and two of our woolliest vests. Well, Enid and I are anyway.

  Mummy puts the kettle on again and makes us all a cup of cocoa.

  “I wish we could be suffragettes every night,” I say, and Enid says she does too.

  “And how perfectly scrumptious that Cook and Miss Norcote are suffragettes too!” she says. “I never knew you were a suffragette, Cook. Have you always been one and just never told us?”

  Cook laughs. “Eh?” she says. “Me? Not likely! Nay, but it’s a cruel hard world to be a woman in, I do know that.”

  “Is it?” I say. Is Cook’s life cruel and hard? I thought she liked working for us.

  “Is it?” says Cook. “Why! What sort of lives do most women lead? Housework, and babbies, and worrying about your man – if you have one – and trying to keep the wolf from your door if you don’t. Take my sister Gertie. She works at Ennesthwait Mill and earns half what a man does for doing the same job. Where’s the fairness in that?”

  “Really?” says Enid.

  “Teaching’s the same,” says Miss Norcote. “A man has to support a family, but a woman only has to support herself. That’s what they say. So she gets paid half the money for doing the same job.”

  There’s a bitterness in her voice that I’ve never heard before. I’m horrified.

  “The brutes!”

  “Aye,” said Cook. “And do they pay the widow more if she has a family to support? Do they heck!”

  “No,” says Miss Norcote. “It’s almost impossible for a woman to provide for a family. I should know.”

  “You’ve got a family?” I say. “You’ve got childr
en?”

  Now I really am shocked. People who aren’t married can’t have children. It’s… well, I don’t know if it’s against the law or what, but nobody does.

  “You can’t have children!” Enid says. “You’re a Miss!”

  “And don’t I know it!” Miss Norcote says bitterly. “No, I don’t have children. But once, a long time ago, I had a mother and a poor invalid sister. And when my dear father passed away, it was my duty to provide for them.”

  We stare. This is fascinating. I never thought of Miss Norcote as a person, not really. She’s just… she’s just there. Teaching us arithmetic, and mending our stockings, and telling us we have to finish our bread and butter before we eat our cake.

  “What happened?” I say. “Couldn’t you do it?”

  “No, I managed it, just about. We sold our dear old house and moved to furnished rooms in Harrogate. My mother ran the house and I got a job teaching mathematics in a girls school. But it was a very difficult time. My sister needed so many things that we simply couldn’t afford: doctors’ bills, and special food, and rest cures at the seaside. She was twenty-six when she died, and I’ve often wondered…”

  She stops, her voice choking. Enid puts out her hand. “Poor darling Miss Norcote,” she says.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mummy says. “Unmarried women have it so hard, I always think.”

  A lot of women don’t have husbands. Mummy says it’s because so many men go out to India and Africa and places like that. Miss Norcote gives a most un-Miss-Norcote-ish snort. It’s the only word for it.

  “At least the unmarried woman can earn a living!” she says. “I had to refuse the only marriage proposal I ever received, because I simply couldn’t look after Mother and Esther if I didn’t have a job.”

  I’m agog. A love affair! A doomed love affair!

  “Couldn’t your husband look after them?” I say. “Who was he?” says Enid.

  Miss Norcote is shaking her head.