As a Lover

FROM THE AUTHOR

"The title, As a Lover, comes from a line in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness: “she kissed her full on the lips, as a lover.” It’s an overtly lesbian phrase in the first overtly lesbian novel published in English. Seven years earlier, the British Parliament had considered criminalising lesbian sexuality in the same way that they’d already criminalised gay male sexuality. However, they concluded that such a move would be “a very great mischief” because it might give women who’d never heard of lesbianism ideas. For the establishment, silence was the best policy. In 1928, Radclyffe Hall shattered that silence. As a Lover is the story of what happened next."

—Hilary McCollum

Chapter One

I read somewhere that life works in seven-year cycles. Maybe it’s true. I was born in July 1907. When I was seven, my father took himself away to war and I learned how to breathe. At fourteen, I started work at the mill and I saw my father with the blood of a dead man on his hands. I’ll be twenty-one in five days’ time. I won’t celebrate it. It’s the day I killed my mother. That’s what my father always says, anyway. He’ll say it this Friday, but I won’t be there to hear him. I’m far away across the sea. I’ve been in London for six months now.

I open the front door of 65 Dunlace Road. The house is fragrant from Sibyl’s cooking. “It’s only me,” I call, “Maggie.” I feel the need to announce myself even though I’ve been living here a week already. Baby Girl, a mostly black terrier with splashy white paws, gallops along the hallway, greeting me like the prodigal returned.

“We’re in the kitchen,” Sibyl says. Her voice is upper-crust. There’s a story as to why she’s living in a terraced house in Hackney and not some country mansion but I don’t know it.

Sibyl’s the reason I’m here. She put a notice in a shop advertising a room. She’d drawn a wee picture of it, the bed and the wardrobe and the window looking onto the garden. I could hardly believe my luck when she said I could have it. A room to myself at last and an inside bathroom and everything. Her friend Tilda lives here too. I’d guess they’re both somewhere in their thirties, close to my Auntie Ruth. She was thirty-six when she died.

The pair of them are sat at the kitchen table drinking tea from fancy porcelain cups.

“Did you buy anything at the market?” Sibyl says.

“Cherries.” I put the bag on the table.

“I love cherries.” Tilda helps herself before I’ve the chance to offer her one.

“Can you swim?” Sibyl asks me.

“Aye, I can swim.”

“We’re taking a picnic to the Women’s Pond if you’d care to join us.”

I left Belfast in the clothes I stood up in, taking the boat train the day after my Auntie Ruth’s funeral. I’ve not got as far as buying a new bathing suit. Sibyl has a spare costume I can borrow. Soon we’re on the train to Hampstead Heath, London passing by outside the window.

I’ve not been to the Heath before. The sunshine’s brought the crowds out but the tree-lined track that leads to the Women’s Pond has an air of tranquillity. A wooden sign reads:

Welcome to Kenwood Ladies Pond.

No men allowed beyond this point.

WOMEN ONLY

I follow Sibyl and Tilda towards a wooden platform facing a small lake. A sloping lawn to our right is strewn with towels and blankets.

“We should have got here earlier,” Tilda says.

“There’s plenty of room.” Sibyl leads the way across the lawn to an empty patch of green. She lays out our tartan blanket.

I look around. A hundred women or more are spread out across the grass, talking in groups, or lying alone, reading or sleeping. Shrieks erupt from the lake below. I can feel the energy of the place, a buzz like a hive. My heart quickens.

“Swim first, picnic after?” Tilda says.

The changing rooms sit behind the platform. Women are in all states of undress and I don’t know where to put my eyes. Auntie Ruth brought me up to keep myself private. I try not to notice the soft breasts and bristling curls. The ribbed silk of my borrowed costume is night and day from the mohair one I left behind in Belfast. I slip off my stockings and knickers and pull it up as far as I can before removing my skirt. Off with my blouse and up with the black silk over my brassiere. I unhook it discreetly and slide it out before quickly slipping my arms into the costume.

“Are you ready?” Tilda says. She’s as lean and lithe as a whippet in her navy swimsuit, hard muscles visible on her arms and legs. Sibyl’s more womanly curves.

I follow them out of the changing rooms. A rowing boat sits in the water next to the platform and two lifeguards are on duty. I won’t be needing them. Swimming is the only thing I’ve ever been really good at.

You’re your mummy’s double. It’s the mermaid in you.

Those were my Granny Palmer’s first words to me. My father had kept me from my mummy’s people, but the summer after he went to war my Auntie Ruth took me to Portmuck where Granny Palmer lived. I was eight years old.

“M-mermaid?” I used to stammer in them days.

“Aye, my granny, which mean’s your granny’s granny, was a mermaid by the name of Julie. One day, back in 1816, she was swimming in the sea off Portmuck when a fella by the name of William McClelland captured her in a net. He brought her ashore and put her on display in a salt-water bath. It was in the newspapers so it must be true.” She opened a cupboard in the wall and fetched out a frail cutting, kept safe between the leaves of a book. She wanted me to have it. Auntie Ruth said no. She was feared my father would come back from the war and know she’d brought me to my granny against his wishes. I say wishes, but really it was orders, orders that were never spoken, that you had to work out for yourself and then follow to the exact letter.

The war years were a holiday. I’d visit my granny as often as I could. She’d tell me stories of elf-stones and broonies and wee-folk and witches. Granny Palmer was sunshine in a person. I met my mummy through her. Now she whispers to me in my dreams.

Tilda makes her way over to the ladder. Gingerly she backs down the steps into the pond. Sibyl tucks her fair hair into a bathing hat, ready to follow her.

“Is it deep enough to dive?” I ask.

Sibyl nods. The green-brown water waits beneath me as I stand on the edge of the platform. I hesitate for a moment then plunge in. Cold embraces me. This is my first swim since I moved to London. The freedom electrifies me. I flash through the water, racing past Tilda and the next woman and the next. I turn at the marker and speed back towards the platform. Up and down I go, up and down, needing to burn off the excess of energy that’s bursting out of me. Up and down, up and down. At last, my pace slows. Treading water, I look around me. The pond is edged with dense foliage, protection from prying eyes. Back on the platform, women continue to get in and out.

“Enjoying yourself?” The woman’s hair is sleek as a seal. She treads water next to me. “I was watching you from the platform. You’re a fast one. You should be in the Olympic Games.”

Heat rushes to my face.

“Your first time?” she says.

“It is.”

“Thought as much. I’d’ve noticed you. I’m here every weekend. Janet Vause.”

“Maggie Dillon.”

Treading water, we shake hands awkwardly across the surface of the lake.

“You here on your own?”

“No. I came with my landlady and her friend.” I look around for Sibyl and Tilda. “I should be getting back to them.”

“Well, nice meeting you, Maggie Dillon. See you around.” She winks before diving under the surface. Her head pops up a couple of yards away and then she’s into a smooth breaststroke. Every weekend, I think, as I swim in the opposite direction, back to the platform. I could come every weekend.

Gathering my clothes, I hurry across the lawn. I feel ridiculous in my dripping costume when I catch sight of Tilda and Sibyl on the blanket, fully clothed. Worse still, they’re not alone. An impish-faced woman sits cross-legged on a striped blanket that abuts our red tartan. An older woman lounges by her side, her long legs stretched out onto the grass. I wonder if I should go back and get changed. Before I can, Tilda looks up. “Ah, Maggie. At last.”

“I’m sorry for keeping you.”

“Not at all. You looked like you were enjoying yourself,” Sibyl says. “These are our friends, Rachel Barrett—”

“Pleased to meet you,” the older woman says, sitting up.

“And Ida Wylie.”

“My friends usually call me Uncle,” the imp says. I don’t know whether this is a joke, a dig at Sibyl, or an instruction as to how to address her, so I just nod as if she’s made a perfectly reasonable statement.

“This is our new lodger, Maggie Dillon.”

“Shall we eat?” Tilda says.

I help unpack the picnic hamper—mushroom and leek tart, tomato salad, cucumber sandwiches, a flask of tea and bottles of ginger beer. I set the dishes on the tablecloth Tilda has laid out next to the blankets.

“We brought a few things, too.” Uncle removes a cloth from her wicker basket to reveal bread, crackers and several cheeses.

With Auntie Ruth, a picnic was a doorstep butty at the top of Cave Hill. I hardly know where to begin with the feast in front of me.

“Tuck in,” Sibyl says.

I start with the tart. The pastry is crisp and light, the filling rich and creamy.

“Mmm, the salad’s excellent,” Uncle says. “What’s in the dressing?”

“Mayonnaise, red wine vinegar, a little parsley, mustard and a touch of garlic,” Sibyl answers.

“Garlic, indeed,” Uncle says. “Most English women would run a mile.”

“Sibyl isn’t most English women.” Tilda looks at her friend fondly.

“Have you taken in any productions since you got back from America?” Sibyl says.

“No, I’ve been rather a homebody,” Uncle replies. “Anything you would recommend?”

“We went to see Show Boat at Drury Lane last week. It was rather good.”

“I saw it when it opened on Broadway. Have you read the book?”

“I didn’t know there was a book.”

“Yes. Edna Ferber,” Uncle says. “Our sort of woman, I’d say. I think you’d enjoy it. Oh, and you’re going to love Radclyffe Hall’s new one. It’s even got your old ambulance unit in it. I’m reviewing it for The Sunday Times. If I’m not mistaken, it’s going to make rather a splash.”

“How are you finding London?” Rachel asks me, her voice a singsongy Welsh.

“I like it, so I do. What I know of it so far.”

“Have you found yourself a job?”

I don’t waste words on the laundry where I’ve been working till now. Tomorrow my new life begins. “I’m training to be a firefighter.”

“Firefighter!” Uncle exclaims. She smirks at Tilda.

“At the Achille Serre Dry Cleaning Factory.” They must have heard of Achille Serre. It’s the biggest dry cleaning company in England. They’ve shops all over London.

“I’ve never known a firefighter before. Have you Tilda?” Uncle says.

“I can’t say that I have. Would you pass the stilton?”

The conversation subsides and we return to eating. Surely firefighter is a job to impress anyone. It’s no reason for smirking. I’m not sure I like Uncle. Perhaps if I’d told the woman in the pond I’d’ve got a different reaction. What was her name? Janet Something.

Vause. Janet Vause. She comes here every weekend.

Lezlibros
The best books sneak up on you and the words crawl into your brain and into your soul and all of a sudden you view the world differently. That’s what this book does. As a Lover blends a fictional story of young Maggie Dillon discovering her love for women alongside the real history of Radclyffe Hall and the publication (and subsequent banning) of her groundbreaking lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness. ...As a Lover is historical fiction at its best, and is as necessary and relevant today as The Well of Loneliness was in 1928.

Glenn Patterson, Award-winning novelist and screenwriter
As a Lover is that rare and precious thing, an historical novel whose concerns are every bit as urgent now as they were then. A story of real power, told by a writer of consummate skill. Read it. Do.

Evelyn Conlon, Novelist, short story writer and anthologist
We’re gripped immediately by this novel, hooked into the impeccably researched history of the publication of The Well of Loneliness, which acts as backdrop to the coming out experience of Maggie our firefighter, whom we can do nothing but love, as she learns about herself and her world.

Ger Moane, Author of Keeper of Stones
As a Lover vividly imagines the world of 1920s London, of lives riven with desire, intrigue, and ambition, with fascinating glimpses of lesbian life, full of glorious details and moving encounters. It’s a riveting and immersive novel that makes wonderful links between past and present.

Michelle Gallen, Author of Big Girl, Small Town and Factory Girls
Sweeping history, deep emotions and lyrical storytelling animate this tender love story that illuminates the inner lives of neglected legendary heroines. I loved it.

goodreads
Fiona S. - Hilary McCollum has done an extraordinary job of bringing history to life through the fictionalised but historically-rooted retelling of the early nineteenth century struggles of Radclyffe Hall to publish her novel The Well of Loneliness and the ongoing battle against censorship from those in power.