Old Baggage by Lissa Evans

Old Baggage tells you what happened to suffragettes once it was all over.

Those of you versed in suffragette lore will relish the significance of Mattie’s purple, green and white sash and her Holloway medals that she wears to give magic lantern lectures on the history and methods of the militant suffragette movement. You will delight in recognising references to singing The Marseillaise and the WSPU slogan Deeds Not Words.

Mattie Simpkin was a militant suffragette, a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union. The problem for Mattie is it’s now 1928 and she is still a militant suffragette. Apart from the humiliation of being referred to as the old baggage by some of the local youth, she is also carrying around a lot of old baggage of her own. Mattie is fifty-eight years old, but she feels no different than she did when she was thirty. And perhaps that’s part of her problem.

The story begins with Mattie taking a short cut across Hampstead Heath. It’s a fine,

sunny winter’s day. She can hear the sounds of the New Year’s fair ahead. The fairground tunes set her thinking of her younger brother, severely wounded in the war. As she daydreams her handbag is snatched from her grasp. She grabs the miniature bottle of whisky that slips out of the bag before it is whisked away: ‘The slope was in her favour; the missile maintained its height, kept its trajectory, and she was able to feel a split second of wondering pride in an unlost skill before a red-headed girl ran, laughing, from behind the booth, dodged round the thief and received the bottle full in the mouth.’

The rise and fall of that sentence is the rise and fall of the tiny bottle as it hurtles through the air. Then, bam! It descends into comedy. Evans’ writing is full of such delights.

Mattie owns a house adjoining the Heath, that she bought on impulse with the money from a legacy. The house used to be a Mousehole ­– a refuge for women released from prison on licence under the terms of the legislation the suffragettes called the Cat and Mouse Act. The women hid there to avoid returning to prison after recovering from hunger striking. Mattie’s experiences have had a profound effect on her. They have made her who she is.

The house was too big for Mattie alone and she offered it up as a commune for retired suffragettes. Only one friend took her up on the offer. Florrie Lee, known to the suffragette women as The Flea, comes to live in the Mousehole. Old Baggage is as much Florrie’s story as it is Mattie’s.

Florrie is a Health Visitor, a highly trained professional who visits people in need of medical care in their homes. She is in the advance guard of independent women in the nineteen-twenties who lived their own lives and earned their own money. Only it’s not enough money to be able to afford more than a bedsit ‘with a line of mould creeping across the ceiling and a shared kitchen lambent with silverfish’. Florrie is grateful to live with Mattie and offer cooking and gardening in lieu of rent.

There’s a third person whose story is woven into this book – Ida Pearse, the young woman who received a thick lip as a result of Mattie’s throwing abilities. Mattie and Florrie have just lost their house cleaner. They seek out Ida to offer compensation for the damage done and Florrie is inspired to offer her the cleaning job, since Ida has just lost hers ‘for cheek’.

“She corrected one of the ladies.”

“Corrected her on what?”

“Geography”

“What aspect of geography?”

“I don’t know. But we’re not supposed to contradict the ladies. I don’t ever.”

Mattie is inspired to start a girls’ club in opposition to a fascist-style singing and uniform-wearing society for young people that march on the Heath. Mattie’s group, called The Amazons, meets on Sundays to throw javelins, learn morse code, play active treasure hunt games and debate current affairs. Ida, of course, is a member. Mattie and Florrie are determined to improve Ida because Mattie feels that with the upcoming legislation that will grant votes to women on a par with men it is high time that young women knew something about politics.

Trouble follows. Trouble that devastates Mattie, Florrie and Ida. There are reparations to be made. A way forward has to be found. The humour in the characterisation slips into pathos as the reality of life for women who determine to live without the support of men comes into focus. Courage and humility is required at every turn.

Lissa Evans writes from different points of view, slipping from one to another without waiting for a break. This is not a technique used much in modern novels and is sometimes disparagingly referred to as ‘head-hopping’. Evans carries it off with aplomb. If I hadn’t told you, you probably would never notice it happening. It’s a refreshing change from the intense, one person focus that is so common today.

If you like to read an author who has an amusing turn of phrase, or if you want an insight into what happened to the women who fought for the vote after the First World War was over, then Old Baggage is for you.