The Seventh Chair – Kirst D’Raven
The invitation had been very specific.
Dinner. Seven o’clock. Come as you are.
There had been no address or date, which was inconvenient to say the least. Nevertheless, at precisely seven o’clock, Florence Nightingale opened a door that had not been there a moment ago and walked into the dining room. She paused, taking in the six women already seated around the long dining table. Seven chairs. Two were empty.
“Late,” said a woman with a magnificent quantity of hair and the expression of someone who had personally invented punctuality.
Florence eyed the clock on the mantlepiece. It said seven.
“I am precisely on time.”
“Then the clock is wrong.”
Florence regarded the woman coldly.
“I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“No. I’m Beatrix.”
“Potter?”
Beatrix sighed.
“Yes.”
Florence removed her cloak.
“I’ve read your books.”
Beatrix’s expression softened slightly.
“Thank you.”
“My sister liked the rabbit.”
It hardened again.
Across the table somebody snorted. She was small, neat and formidable looking, with the sort of eyes that suggested very little escaped them.
“Maria Dickin,” she said. “Sit down before the soup gets cold.”
Florence sat. The dining room was peculiar. Not unpleasant. Just peculiar. A fire crackled in a stone fireplace although Florence could not remember seeing a chimney from outside.Then again, she couldn’t remember seeing an outside. There were no windows. There were paintings on the walls, but whenever she tried to examine them properly, she found herself looking somewhere else. The table was laid with white linen, silver cutlery and seven place settings. Seven glasses. Seven napkins. Seven bowls of soup. Florence looked at the empty chair.
“Are we waiting for someone?”
Nobody answered.
At the opposite end of the table, a woman looked up from the spoon she had been studying as though considering whether it might be useful for dismantling something.
“Lilian Bland.”
Florence knew the name.
“The aviator?”
“The journalist. Photographer. Sportswoman. Aviator when people insist.”
“You built an aeroplane.”
“I did!” Lilian raised her glass and smiled, as though toasting Florence.
“Did it fly?”
Lilian gave her a look.
“Well now, I wouldn’t be much of an aviator if it hadn’t.”
Beside her, a handsome woman with determined features laughed.
“I like you.”
“How kind…”
“Elsie Inglis.”
“Yes,” said Florence. “I know.”
There was a moment. Not an uncomfortable one exactly. But there are some names that seem to arrive long before their owners do. Elsie raised her glass. “And I know you.”
Florence inclined her head.
“Then we’re even.”
The final woman had been quiet so far. She sat with both hands around her glass, watching the others with an expression that was gentle but by no means timid.
“Eglantyne Jebb.”
Another paused followed. Florence frowned.
“I.m not sure I…”
“Save the Children?”
“Ah”
“Yes.”
“I know your work”
“Most people know the organisation.”
“But not you.”
Eglantyne smiled.
“That seems to be the theme of the evening.”
Silence settled around the table. Then Maria picked up her spoon.
“Can we eat now?”
The soup was excellent, although none of the women were quite sure what was in it. Beatrix suspected it was some kind of mushroom. Lilian thought leek. Elsie insisted there was barley in it. Maria said she didn’t care what was in it provided that everyone stopped dissecting the bloody soup and ate it. Florence found herself smiling. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done that.
There was another thing that was odd about the room. Time seemed to behave strangely here. Dates didn’t seem important. Neither did death. Nobody asked how they had arrived there or where they had come from. And nobody mentioned that, according to any sensible calendar, they should not all have been sitting at the same dining table.
The second course arrived without anyone bringing it. It was just simply there. Beatrix noticed first, staring suspiciously at the roast potatoes.
“Who cooked these?”
Nobody knew.
“Then I’m not eating them!” she pouted, crossing her arms.
“You ate the soup.” said Maria.
“That was before I realised that we didn’t have a cook.”
“Perhaps the rabbit did it,” Lillian giggled.
Beatrix gave her a stare that had probably once turned a publisher to rubble.
“Peter Rabbit Cannot Cook!” Beatrix enunciated each word clearly, as if speaking to a particularly distracted child.
“How do you know?”
“Because I wrote him!”
Lilian picked up her cutlery and began to poke at the food on her plate. “Doesn’t mean you know everything he gets up to…” she muttered. Elsie laughed so hard that she nearly spilled her wine.
Florence decided that she liked Lilian Bland.
Dinner continued slowly, as did the conversation. It began with the harmless things. Weather. Books. Animals. Travel.
Then someone mentioned hospitals and that was when thigs began to get really interesting.
“You were told to go home?” Florence asked incredulously.
Elsie nodded. “By the War Office, yes. Apparently women doctors were surplus to requirements.”
Florence’s mouth tightened. “So you went elsewhere?”
“France.”
“Of course you did.”
“And Serbia.”
“Of course you did.” Florence repeated.
“They gave me an order.”
Florence stared at her for several seconds. Then, raising her glass she said,
“To ignoring idiotic men.”
Every woman seated at the table raised hers. Even Beatrix.
Especially Beatrix.
“To ignoring idiotic men.”
They drank.
After that there was no stopping them.
Lilian told them about building the Mayfly.
“You called your aeroplane Mayfly?” asked Eglantyne.
“Yes,” Lilian replied. “Because it may fly…”
“And if it didn’t?”
“Then presumably I’d have renamed it Maynot.”
Maria nearly choked on her wine.
Beatrix talked about fungi. Not rabbits or Aylsbury ducks wearing blue bonnets. Fungi. She talked about drawing them, studying them, trying to present her scientific work and discovering that being both knowledgeable and female was apparently an intolerable combination.
Florence understood that particular irritation very well.
“So they remember the rabbits,” she said.
“They remember the rabbits.”
“Not the science?”
Beatrix swirled her glass, staring into it as though she might find an answer there.
“Oh! Occasionally the sheep!” she smiled.
“The sheep?” said Florence, “I don’t recall…?”
“I bought farms!” Beatrix cut in, quickly.
“Why?”
“To stop people ruining them.”
Lilian nodded approvingly. “Good.”
Beatrix looked pleased.
Then Maria told them about animals in war. Not sentimentally, she wouldn’t allow that. She spoke of dogs pulling the wounded from the rubble. Pigeons carrying messages through gunfire. Horses, cats and creatures who had no understanding of nations or medals or why human beings had suddenly decided to tear the world apart.
“They served,” Marie said. “That was enough for me.”
“And so you made them a medal?” Elsie asked.
“I made sure someone did.”
“Same thing.”
Maria pretended not to hear her.
Eglantyne spoke last. She told them about children. Hungry children. Children who had belonged to the enemy and therefore, according to some people, deserved to remain hungry.
“They were children.” she said. Nothing more. She didn’t need anything more.
The table became quiet.Florence looked at the six – no, five – faces around it. Her eyes moved towards the empty chair.
Still there. Still laid. Te untouched plate had changed with every course. Soup and dinner, both untouched and removed by unseen hands. Nobody had sat there and yet the place remained. Ready.
Waiting.
“Who is that for?” Florence asked.
This time everyone looked.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Elsie.
“So have I,” said Beatrix.
Maria frowned, “I assumed one of you knew.”
“No.”
Lillian leaned sideways and looked beneath the table.
“What are you expecting to find?” asked Eglantyne.
“I don’t know.”
“Is anyone there?”
“No.”
“Useful.”
Lilian sat upright again. “It was worth checking.”
Dessert arrived. Nobody questioned it anymore. Apple crumble with custard. Maria took seconds. Then coffee appeared. Florence approved of that.
They talked long after the plates had vanished. About what they had done and about what they had failed to do – that surprised Florence.
History, she thought, liked finished things.
Achievements and dates, institutions and books, hospitals, aeroplanes, medals and declarations. It rarely recorded the days when things didn’t work. The letters that went unanswered and the doors closed. The humiliation of being dismissed and the sheer exhaustion. The doubt. The mornings when getting dressed had felt more difficult than changing the world.
“I nearly gave up,” Lilian said,serious now.
“So did I,” said Beatrix.
Elsie nodded.
Maria stared into her coffee.
Eglantyne said nothing.
Florence looked around the table. “But did we?”
Beatrix smiled, “No.”
The fire had burned low. The clock still showed seven ‘o clock. It all seemed impossible, but impossibility had rather lost it’s meaning in this room. Then Eglantyne looked towards the empty chair.
“I think I understand.”
The others followed her gaze. The seventh chair remained untouched.
“Understand what?” Maria asked.
“The invitation.”
Florence reached into her pocket. She still had hes.
Dinner. Seven ‘o clock. Come as you are.
Beatrix produced an identical card. Then Elsie, Maria, Lilian, Eglatyne. Six invitations. Seven chairs.
“There should be another card,” said Florence.
“Yes,” said Eglantyne. “Who has it?”
Eglantyne looked towards the door which, for the first time that evening, had begun to open.
Beyond it was not a corridor or a street. Or London, Cumbria, Ireland, Serbia or anywhere else any of them had known. Instead, there were thousands of rooms.
Classrooms. Bedrooms. Kitchens. Offices. Workshops. Hospital wards. Libraries. Laboratories. Studios. Fields. Factories. And in them were women.
Girls.
Some were reading or working. Some were caring for children or animals. Some were staring at calculations nobody else understood.
One was drawing. Another was writing. One girl was taking apart a machine. Yet another was standing outside a closed door, gathering the courage to knock again.
One was being told “No.”
One had just been laughed at.
One had failed.
One had succeeded and nobody had noticed.
One had an idea she had not yet told anybody about.
One believed she was just ordinary.
The six women stood, nobody spoke for a while. Then Beatrix smiled.
“Oh.”
Florence understood.
The seventh chair had never belonged to somebody missing from the table. It belonged to somebody who hadn’t arrived yet. To somebody whose name would perhaps be printed in books. Perhaps not. History could be peculiar about such things.
History liked monuments and anniversaries. It liked famous names. History like deciding afterwards which moments had mattered.
But history was not made afterwards.
It was made in kitchens and workshops and hospital wards. At desks. In laboratories. On bicycles, In muddy fields and beside sickbeds.
With pencils and petitions and sheer, bloody stubbornness.
Sometimes, history was made with aeroplanes that might fly.
And sometimes history was made by a woman who had absolutely no idea that what she was doing mattered.
Florence walked to the empty chair. She pulled it away from the table.
The others watched.
Somewhere beyond the open door, another woman was being told that she couldn’t.
Florence smiled. She had heard that before. They all had.
She looked through the doorway. Maybe, somehow, the woman on the other side could see them.
Six women at a table and one empty place. Waiting.
Florence rested her hand upon the back of the chair.
“Well?” she said.
“Are you going to sit down?”
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