And we all stood there looking at each other. The day was darkish, drizzly. A grey cloud sat squarely over Thorpe-on-Ouse like an island in the sky. On the long path cut diagonally through the churchyard, we fell in with a thin stream of churchgoers, as the sound of a distant train filled the sky: a Leeds train or London train. It rattled away, leaving the cold, old sound of church bells. The wife had spied Lillian Backhouse, and, having made her excuses to Dad, had dashed on ahead. Lillian Backhouse, I knew, did not believe in God but went to church only because her husband was the verger. As far as I knew, most of the suffragists were like Lillian: non-believers. But Lydia did believe, and I went to church – sometimes – because she went, whereas Dad went to church because he thought it was the gentlemanly thing to do.
St Andrew's Church smelt of damp kneelers and old flags and banners. These hung down dead from the roof. They were set in rows above the pews, and reminded me somehow of the moving cranes in a locomotive erecting shop. The wife had re-joined us at our regular pew, which was at the back. Major Turnbull's pew, of course, was at the front, and when he walked in, making along the aisle towards it, I pointed him out to Dad, who was not in the least interested, which knocked me rather.
'No fresh meat to be seen in your kitchen, James,' he whispered, so that the wife would not hear. 'Do you not have a joint on Sundays?' 'Not every Sunday' I said. 'In your larder' he said, 'the emphasis is rather on the can. A young lady in Lydia's condition,' he continued, lowering his voice yet further, 'needs a regular supply of good, fresh meat.' 'Well' I said, 'she's living on raspberry-leaf tea and humbugs just now.' 'The baby will be small' he said. 'They generally are, aren't they?' He ignored that, but turned into a different channeclass="underline" 'Where does Lydia wash the clothes, James?' he asked. 'In the bathtub,' I said. It was the wrong answer. After the service, I reflected that Dad was bringing out the suffragist even in me. He'd never done a hand's turn about the house. As a widower he'd always had help: a half-time maid when I was a boy, and now Mrs Barrett, his housekeeper. Afterwards, the three of us stood in the churchyard, and the wife said: 'Lillian's going to look in later.' Then the wife said, 'The river's just nearby, you know, Harry.' 'We thought we might have a swing out there,' I said, for this was the second part of the plan. Dad said: 'Are you sure you're able, my love?' 'Quite sure' said the wife, shortly. 'How are things in Baytown, Dad?' I asked as we set off past the front of the Archbishop's Palace. 'I'm kept pretty busy with the meetings of the Conservative Club. It was our annual meeting on Monday. Very good attendance, considering…' 'Considering that you lost,' I put in, which I'd done because I'd feared the wife might, and it would come much worse from her. Dad already knew me for a Labour man, his own son a lost cause. 'I consider it a blessing in disguise that the Liberals got in, James. It'll give us the chance to put our house in order.' He turned to the wife. 'You're still campaigning, are you, dear?' We're in for bother now, I thought, as the wife nodded, saying: 'Church League for Women's Suffrage and Women's Social and Political Union.' 'Well, that sounds enough to be going on with,' said Dad, as the wife strode on ahead, opening up a little ground between herself and Dad and me. We were walking past the old, ruined church on the riverbank now, and the few gravestones that stood at crazy angles around it. 'You know,' said Dad, to the back of the wife's hat, 'women have got along perfectly well up to now without the vote. Why should they want it now all of a sudden?' "This is a new century,' said the wife, striding on, as though about to walk into the river, 'and women want new things.' 'They want the vote,' said Dad. 'And other things besides,' said the wife. 'Such as what?' said dad. 'Sexual liberation,' said the wife, without looking back, and Dad turned to me with his mouth open and a look of panic on his face. We are unbalanced, I thought, as we came to a wet, slippery sty, and Dad helped the wife over, neither of them saying anything; there ought to have been another female in the picture, but there again perhaps there would be in a little under a month's time. We were right by the river now. It was wide and cold, carrying more brightness in its golden colour than the sky, and hard to look at, somehow. To our left were the private riverside grounds of the Archbishop's Palace, to the right the muddy path that lead towards Naburn Locks. We walked on in silence for a while, then Dad said to me: 'Hodgson has a new shed down on the front.'
'What for?'
'Boils crabs in it.'
The wife looked back at us, pulling a face.
'He doesn't do it for fun, you know,' I called ahead to her. 'He's a fisherman.'
The Hodgsons were one of the three or four big fishing families in Baytown. Dad didn't hold with them. They were vulgar sorts, he thought, stinking at all times of fish or foul cigars. Also, anybody eating fish was not eating meat, and Dad had been a butcher most of his life. Thinking on, it was a wonder he stayed put in that spot for so long. If he could have, he would have taken a rope and dragged the whole of Baytown up the cliff and away from the sea.
We began to hear the noise of the weir, and presently we stood before it, the water racing over the smooth stone slopes. It was not possible to speak in that stream of din. The swing bridge that carried the London trains over the river lay beyond. It looked like a steel tower that had over-toppled.
We turned about, and were back home for two o'clock. It was dinner time but there was no dinner, only tea, which the wife had half-prepared, so I put off the subject of food, made up the fire and lit the gas (for it was already dark outside). Dad looked at the pocket knife on the mantelshelf, saying:
'This is a handsome one, James, where did you get it?'
I don't recall answering, but poured him out a bottle of beer, and sat him on the chair near the fire, where he went to sleep in short order. I suggested that the wife have a lie- down, but she went off to the kitchen to finish the tea, and I picked up the Police Gazette once more. At first, I didn't read, but thought of Baytown, stacked up on its cliff – not so much streets as steps. If you let fall a marble anywhere in the town, it would be on the beach within a minute. I thought of the fishing families, and how they carved model ships and sailed them in the rock pools, which proved they liked the sea in some way. It wasn't just something they were stuck with. Anybody could join in too, even the butcher's son, so I liked the fishermen… But the railway ran around the headland, high and free, and timetables had held more fascination for me than tide-tables.
I looked down at the Police Gazette, and, without thinking, turned over the page reading 'Deserters and Absentees from His Majesty's Service' to that reading 'Portraits of Persons Wanted'.
I read the by-now familiar words: 'Apprehensions Sought.' 'Metropolitan Police District,' I read, lighting on the top one on the page. 'Joseph Howard Vincent, whose arrest is sought for the murder of two police detectives at Victoria on August 23rd, 1902.' There was a bad picture. The fellow was blurred, and further away than the usual Police Gazette lot, as if he'd already started making his escape at the moment the picture was taken. He looked to be on a gangway of a ship. The sky was very large behind him, and half of it might have been sea, when I looked closer. 'Complexion fresh,' I read, 'rather high cheekbones, carries head rather forward, beard, dark grey mixture jacket suit, silk hat. Eyes small and shifty. Blue. Erect bearing; has a habit of biting his nails. Until the date of the murder he lived on the prostitution of a murdered woman. Two days after the murder he is said to have been at Great Grimsby. Sentenced at Durham Assizes, 21st April 1890, to seven years' penal servitude for burglary at a pawnbroker's and shooting at police. Will probably be found in hotels. Warrant issued. Information to be forwarded to the Metropolitan Police Office, New Scotland Yard, S.W.' It was Valentine Sampson. Dad moved suddenly in his chair. I looked slowly across at him, thinking: it should have been me giving a jolt like that. 'I wasn't asleep was I, James?' I said nothing; my mind was elsewhere, but he really wanted to know. The wife was setting out the tea things. 'I wasn't asleep, was I, son?' There was a loud pounding on the door. The wife stepped across, opened it, and in walked Lillian Backhouse. The wife was introducing her to Dad. I was distantly aware of things starting badly, when Lillian handed a package to the wife, saying: 'Here's the scented oil. Now you are to rub it on here.' She was pointing with two hands down towards her cunny. Dad was looking across at me, his face red from the fire, looking like a man trapped in his seat. Was it Valentine Sampson? That was just the kind of name you might make up if you were swell-headed… He did have a fresh complexion, but did he carry his head forwards? I couldn't have said. Dad was now talking to Lillian; or the other way about. He was saying, 'You have children yourself, Mrs Backhouse?' 'I was continually pregnant for eleven years,' she replied. 'Eyes small and shifty.' Valentine Sampson's eyes were not small. They were large and shifty. Dad was looking puzzled. He was turning to Lillian Backhouse. 'But you must have had a child at the end of all that time?' The wife was laughing, trying to steer the sound of it in the direction of politeness, but not quite succeeding. Lillian Backhouse was standing in the centre of the room, hair down like a girl, her legs set further apart than is generally considered ladylike. She was swaying her middle back and forth, moving her thin dress, and saying her piece: