(Author's Note: Great Scott… I was reading through the historical notes I made for this fic a few months ago and…its 200,000 words…damn. Anyway toodles.)
[Cardiff, Wales – 06:13AM, 4th of May, 1928]
"Good morning!" I said it in that slightly sarcastic, slightly over-enthusiastic tone that adults instinctively adopted when speaking to a two-year-old.
Charlotte smiled at me.
I took her from Kitty's arms, settling her against my chest as Kitty finally sat down at the table.
Kitty had apparently decided that waking Charlotte up at an ungodly hour was necessary because she wanted us to be up to say goodbye before she left.
I took another sip of tea and returned to my seat at the table, holding Charlotte with one arm while trying to read my newspaper.
Kitty, after muttering a short prayer to herself, was essentially grazing her way through the breakfast I'd made.
It wasn't my fault she hadn't woken up early enough.
I glanced at the clock.
"So, what time's your train leaving?" I asked
Kitty paused halfway through reaching for something.
"Hmm?" She sounded as if she were not paying attention.
"Your train."
She thought about it for a moment before speaking. "About thirty minutes."
I lowered my cup.
"Right."
She continued eating.
"And if you miss it?" I said pointedly
She looked at me.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Because if Kitty missed that train, she wasn't going to be merely a little late. She had somewhere to be. Specifically, Sicily.
There was a race scheduled there. What was it called again…the Targa Florio? Yes, that was it.
Which meant Kitty had to get there, preferably before the race.
I suddenly remembered something.
"Wait."
Kitty looked at me.
"Did the car make it to Palermo?"
"Yes." she replied
"It did? When?" I asked
"A week ago, I think. Michael sent a telegram."
"Good." I responded, my eyes still roaming along the lines of my paper.
"Getting it through customs was a bit of a nightmare, apparently. A customs officer who apparently became significantly more cooperative after receiving a rather substantial sum of money became a lot more willing to pass the cargo."
I nodded sagely.
"Don't look so pleased with yourself." she chastised
I replied, saying, "I was merely appreciating the efficiency of international commerce."
She rolled her eyes as I returned my attention to the newspaper, flattening it across the table. It was somewhat more awkward than usual because I still had Charlotte tucked against me, meaning I had to hold the paper down and turn it with one hand, but I didn't mind.
I scanned the headlines.
"Oh." I said, 'Reading a feature article,' though I was surprised it wasn't on the front page.
Kitty glanced over.
"What?"
"Women's suffrage."
She looked at me.
"The bill passed Parliament; it just needs Royal Assent now."
"Yes, I saw that earlier."
I looked down at the article.
It was rather remarkable how long it had taken. Britain had technically expanded the franchise to women over thirty back in 1918, while men could vote from twenty-one. It had been a significant step, certainly, but it had never been complete equality.
A twenty-nine-year-old woman could be perfectly capable of understanding politics, paying taxes and contributing to society, and still be told that she wasn't old enough to vote.
A twenty-one-year-old man, meanwhile, could.
The suffrage movement had lost some of its urgency after 1918, but it certainly hadn't disappeared. There was still plenty of anger surrounding the remaining restrictions, even if Britain hadn't developed quite the same political culture around the issue as the Yanks had.
Now Parliament was finally moving towards fixing it.
I looked back at Kitty. "Still, that's pretty good."
"It is," she nodded.
Charlotte made a small noise against my chest. I looked down at her. "Yes, I know. Very exciting."
Apparently, parliamentary reform was not particularly interesting to a two-year-old. I returned to the newspaper.
"Oh, and you're going to the World Fair, aren't you?"
"Yes. That's why Charlotte's coming with me. I want to show her around."
She gave me a completely deadpan expression. I knew that look.
"What?" I said incredulously.
"You're going to the World Fair because you want to go." She accused.
"Well, technically I have to go for the opening of several of our exhibits. It's called responsibility," I justified.
She interrupted, "It's called wanting to go to the World Fair."
"Trivial difference." I shook my head.
"You're impossible." Then she leaned across the table and kissed my forehead.
"Try to enjoy yourselves."
Then she leaned down and kissed Charlotte enthusiastically on the cheek.
"Goodbye, sweetheart."
Charlotte giggled.
Kitty straightened, grabbed her bag and headed towards the door. I watched her go. Then I looked down at Charlotte. She looked back at me. I looked at the clock. Then at the newspaper. Then back at Charlotte.
"Well," I said quietly. "I suppose we have a regular fayre to attend as well, don't we…"
The first thing Charlotte did when we reached the livestock section was point.
I followed her finger and found a cow staring back at us with the sort of profound disinterest that only a cow could manage. Charlotte looked at it for several seconds, then looked back at me, then pointed at it again.
"Moo," she said quietly, with the word rising at the end as though she were asking me a question.
I stopped as there was something about the way she said it that caught me completely off guard. It was barely more than a sound, really, and yet it was so ridiculously adorable that I had to spend a second processing it before I could respond like a normal human being.
She was holding onto my arm because she still wasn't particularly interested in walking anywhere for long periods of time.
"Yes," I said eventually, trying not to smile too much. "That's a cow."
She seemed satisfied with this answer and went back to staring at the cow.
I shifted her higher against my side and continued walking, carrying her with one arm while she rested against me. She was a surprisingly heavy little thing after a while, although I wasn't about to complain about it.
Most of the time she preferred being carried when there was anything particularly interesting happening, and an agricultural fair apparently qualified as several hours of particularly interesting happening.
There were cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, horses, tractors, stalls selling food, children running around everywhere and enough sweets to make a dentist spontaneously develop a headache.
Charlotte's attention moved from one thing to another with almost no warning. She pointed at a horse. "Mm."
She looked at the pig for a moment, shook her head and buried her face against my shoulder. "Apparently we're not impressed by pigs."
We continued through the fairgrounds, and I quickly discovered that being the richest man in Cardiff was apparently less useful than being the father of a two-year-old when it came to navigating crowds. People were quite happy to wait until I was carrying Charlotte before approaching me, presumably because they had decided that I couldn't escape without looking like an arse.
The first was a councillor I vaguely recognised, followed by a businessman involved in one of the local manufacturing firms, and then a man from the docks who spent several minutes explaining to me how absolutely wonderful the future of Cardiff was going to be if I continued investing in it. I listened politely, nodded in the appropriate places and occasionally answered a question, while Charlotte remained largely uninterested in the entire affair. She seemed considerably more concerned with a tray of brightly coloured sweets on a nearby stall.
Eventually she pointed.
I looked at the sweets and then at her. "No."
She stared at me. She pointed again. I ignored her.
By the time we reached the main agricultural pavilion, I'd already been approached by enough people to understand why politicians had started becoming interested in me. Money had a remarkable ability to make people discover that they had always been your friend. The interesting thing was that most of them weren't even particularly subtle about it, but then again, maybe Charlotte being in my arms lowered their guard. They wanted factories, contracts, housing developments, investments, rail connections, dock improvements, or simply the opportunity to be seen talking to me.
Then a man approached who I actually wanted to talk to.
He introduced himself, and once I'd heard his name, I recognised him as one of the new union representatives who had just been elected, a broad-shouldered man in his forties who looked considerably less interested in flattering me than everyone else had been. He glanced briefly at Charlotte, who was still being fussy over not having sweets, then back at me.
"Mr Sullivan. I've been meaning to speak with you. I represent a fair number of the men working in your factories."
"I know." I was going to arrange a meeting with the new board of representatives when I return from the continent next month.
He seemed slightly surprised that I hadn't immediately become defensive. "So you'll do something about it?"
"About what?" I asked, genuinely concerned.
He seemed to hesitate. "We've got several complaints from the packing factory over in Roath that the night manager has been…making inappropriate advances on some of the ladies you have working there."
"I see…well, give me his name and I'll get someone I trust to look into it." I responded.
He considered that for several seconds before saying. "Some of the men say you encourage strikes?"
"I'd accept the right to strike. Whether I'd encourage it is another matter." That statement finally made him laugh.
"Fair enough," he said.
I then said while glancing at a pig Charlotte was looking at. "Besides, I'd rather you tell me there's a problem before it becomes a strike."
"And you'd listen?" he asked incredulously.
"If you've got evidence, yes."
He nodded slowly. "I can work with that."
"Good. Then bring me the complaints. Actual complaints, not rumours, and I'll have someone look into them."
He held out his hand. I shook it.
"Mr Sullivan."
"Yes?" I replied.
"You're a strange one."
I chortled at his statement. "I've been called worse."
He walked away, and I watched him disappear into the crowd.
Charlotte tugged gently at my collar.
I looked down.
She pointed towards the livestock pens again.
"Cow?" I asked.
"Mhm."
"Yes," I said. "More cows."
And, apparently, that was considerably more important than industrial workers' relations.
We spent the next hour wandering around the fair, with Charlotte continuing to point at anything she found interesting while I supplied the vocabulary she didn't seem particularly interested in using herself. She could understand considerably more than she could say, which meant that most conversations consisted of me asking questions and her responding with a nod, a shake of the head, an "mm-hmm", or an "mm-mm", depending on whether I had correctly guessed what she wanted.
It was actually rather charming.
She didn't need to talk much. She simply watched everything, absorbed it and occasionally offered a tiny verbal contribution when something was important enough to deserve one.
By the time we left the main fairgrounds, she had fallen asleep against my shoulder, one hand loosely gripping the front of my jacket. I carried her through the streets without waking her, passing the rows of houses that had been going up over the last few years.
Out of all the things I'd done, those buildings were one of the things I was most proud of.
They weren't particularly glamorous. They weren't supposed to be. They were simply clean, solid homes with proper drainage, reliable water, electricity where we could provide it, and enough space that a family didn't have to live practically on top of another family. There were shared green spaces between the blocks, proper roads and pavements, and enough room for children to actually play outside.
Cardiff was growing quickly, probably far faster than historically due to the jobs I was creating, and without creating somewhere decent for the people filling those jobs to live, it was eventually going to become a problem.