Blood on the Wood Read Free Page B

a relief when we got it down to the hall and propped it against the umbrella stand.
    â€˜I’ve asked them to have the gig ready. There’s a good train in just over an hour you should be in time to catch – unless you’d like another lemonade first?’
    As I was thanking him and declining more lemonade, Adam came in at the front door, looking annoyed.
    â€˜Uncle, have you got the key to the schoolhouse? Some of Daniel’s confounded Scipians have arrived already and they want to get it aired.’
    Mr Venn rummaged in his pockets.
    I asked Adam, ‘Who are these Scipians?’
    â€˜So the news hasn’t spread yet? They’re a breakaway group from the Fabians that my dear brother seems to have got himself involved with. He’s invited them to hold a summer camp on Uncle’s land.’
    I knew that Oliver and Philomena Venn, as good middle-class socialists, had been among the founders of the Fabian movement and guessed that Adam was of the same persuasion.
    â€˜Philomena would have wanted it,’ Oliver Venn said sadly, still failing to find the key. ‘She’d have liked to think of young people from the factories having a few days of sunshine and country air.’
    Adam gave me another of his looks that implied he and I knew things weren’t as simple as that, but his tone with his uncle was patient.
    â€˜Don’t worry, I’ll see to them. We must hope Daniel remembers they’re coming and gets home in time. Now, has somebody called the gig for Miss Bray?’
    He said good afternoon to me and disappeared into the back of the house. Mr Venn came out to see me off and make sure the picture was safely stowed in the gig. As we turned into the road I looked back and there he was still standing there, like a fond parent watching his first-born going away to school.
    *   *   *
    I caught the train with ten minutes to spare and paid extra to go first class, so that the Odalisque could travel upright on two seats. For the first part of the journey my mind was on her and Philomena, but as we got nearer London I started worrying about the unexpected result of my trip. The news about the Fabians and the Scipians was not good because it meant more campaigning work when we all had more than enough. All right, I know reformist groups are always splitting like seed pods on a hot day. It’s one of life’s little unfairnesses that while alliances of the cynical and greedy seem to rub along quite happily for decades, put three idealists in the same room and you immediately get at least two different parties. To those outside it usually doesn’t matter one way or the other. But if – like the Suffragettes – you’re a group fighting for one particular issue, you have to pick up allies wherever you can, from moderate Liberal to anything this side of revolutionary anarchist. It had taken us a lot of time and work to get the ever-cautious Fabians to put votes for women high on their agenda. Since, for my sins, part of my job for the WSPU was to know what was happening in other political groups, I’d been aware that two factions within the Fabians were fighting each other – one more radical, the other less so. A split had been on the cards for some time, but now it had happened and I hadn’t known about it, which was careless. I’d have to spend some time finding out who’d ended up on which side of the split and whether the Scipians were worth cultivating from our point of view. This was where my mind was as we drew into Paddington and I realised I’d have to move fast if I intended to get the Odalisque into the safe hands of Christie’s before it closed.
    *   *   *
    I let a porter carry her to the cab queue for the sake of speed and managed to get to Christie’s as the doorman was just shutting up for the day. He wasn’t impressed with me or my package, but as luck would have it the