Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  ‘I have seen her, Jonathan, yes.’

  Martin Armstrong sat back behind his desk in his thick, leather swivel armchair. He hoped he did not look as nervous as he felt. He thought he had found a way of dealing with the danger Sarah Becket presented. He did not like it, but it was better than the alternative. Prison, exposure, disgrace.

  Jonathan isn’t going to like this either, Martin thought. But then he isn’t going to find out all the details straight away. I shall have to lie to him. When he finds out about that, our relationship will be over for good.

  But then it’s his own fault. If the bloody man could control his own wife none of this would have happened at all!

  As he leaned back in the chair the expensive leather creaked, and Martin’s thick, capable hands were clasped comfortably over his ample stomach and watch chain. The look on his face was benign, mellow, comforting. Like a doctor about to reassure a difficult, anxious patient.

  ‘You have seen her? Good! And?’ Jonathan was impatient for him to go on.

  ‘And I am pleased to tell you she is well.’

  ‘Oh! Really? Thank God for that.’

  For a man who has spent the last two hours in the rooms upstairs, he gives a good impression of concern, Martin thought. But then, lust is one thing, concern for wife and reputation, another. He smiled reassuringly.

  ‘Not only well, but she is eating normally. In fact, after my little talk with her she is co-operating with the prison authorities in every way.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Jonathan stared at him, temporarily speechless. ‘What on earth did you say to her, man?’

  Martin’s smile broadened. ‘What do you think? I told her of your concern, and explained to her as a medical man that if she did not eat she would do herself irreparable damage, and that that would be no good to anyone at all. I told her that she had already struck her blow by slashing the picture. It was in all the newspapers, she need do nothing more to help her movement. And I explained to her that if she ate now and completed her sentence then you, as her husband, would take full care of her when she came out. I hope that was not going too far?’

  Martin frowned and peered at Jonathan over the desk. There was just the faintest hint of a conspiratorial twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘No, of course not. Not at all. Do you mean she made no attempt whatsoever to starve herself?’

  ‘Oh yes, she did at first. For two days in fact. But I think it was giving her some pain and my visit . . . persuaded her.’

  Martin smiled, his thick lips peeling back briefly to reveal strong teeth only slightly yellowed by tobacco.

  ‘Then — if she is obeying prison regulations, can I see her?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ This was the difficult part. Any communication between husband and wife at this point would expose his lie straight away. Martin shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘Not for the first month, at least. I tried to persuade the governor but he is adamant. You can try to put pressure on from above, but I think it would be unwise. If . . . I don’t pretend to fully understand the female psyche but I get the impression that if Mrs Becket believed she was being granted special treatment she might well begin to starve herself again in some perverted form of protest. I grant it is a strange way of thinking but that is what we have to suffer these days, it seems.’

  He watched Jonathan carefully across his desk, the professional frown still thoughtfully in place. There was a slight throbbing pulse in Martin’s neck which betrayed his anxiety, but he judged correctly that only he himself was aware of it. If Jonathan accepted this, it would be all right. No suspicions would be aroused; there would be time for the next step. If Sarah could be kept in prison for even part of her six month sentence, he would have time to cover up every trace of what he was doing in the rooms upstairs. Then she could shout her head off all she liked. No one would believe her.

  Jonathan hesitated. ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’

  ‘Believe me. In my profession, even more than yours, one gets to see more than one type of human behaviour, and what you and I might consider logic is . . . not universally accepted. But if we play it her way I am convinced Mrs Becket will come round without harming herself further. And that is what you want, Jonathan, is it not?’

  ‘Of course I do, man. She is my wife.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Martin relapsed into silence, guessing the conflicting tides of emotion that were coursing through Jonathan’s mind. Jonathan had come to him because his marriage was in trouble, but that did not mean that he was not still fond of the woman, however oddly she behaved. And he was fonder still of the institution of marriage — and his own reputation. He did not want that destroyed, whatever he did with the girls upstairs. So far, Martin believed, Jonathan saw him as a confidant, a helper. But the relationship could easily turn the other way. And now, above all times, he could not afford to let that happen.

  ‘You will see her again?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘Of course. Frequently. Every day almost, until the Senior Medical Officer returns from holiday.’

  ‘You will take care of her, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. To the best of my ability. Your feelings do you credit, Jonathan. Especially when I know the strain she has put you under this past year.’

  The two men looked at each other over the table. It was very quiet in the consulting room for a moment, and Jonathan could hear the ticking of a large case clock somewhere outside in the hall. Outside there in the hall, too, were the rich pink hangings of the wallpaper, he knew, the soft pink carpet leading away upstairs. It was a path he had trodden often, over the past year. A long staircase, over a carpet deliberately, luxuriously soft. He had come down it only a quarter of an hour ago, after the most delicious time in bed with the maid, who had removed her apron to reveal the most perfect pair of smooth, elegant breasts, their nipples slightly rouged with lipstick. No one knew he went up there but Martin — and Martin would never tell. After all, it was a medical matter, in a way, and no doctor would betray a confidence.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Life is not always straightforward, but when we married it was for better or worse, I promised her that. And with your help, Martin, I shall be able to keep that promise without losing my sanity. At least this way there are no strings, no ties, no emotional complications. A healthy mind in a healthy body, what?’

  ‘Quite so.’ Martin smiled, waited a little, and then stood up to indicate that the interview was over. He escorted Jonathan to the door, watched as he took his coat, umbrella and hat from the stand. ‘Don’t worry about your wife. I shall see that her health is taken care of.’

  And you will probably want to murder me when you find out how I am doing it, he thought, as he watched Jonathan walk briskly away down the pavement.

  14

  THE ROUTINE was the same every morning. At about half past five a terrible grinding, crashing noise would come from the depths of the prison. Sarah never found out what it was — it sounded as if a giant iron fireplace was being dragged from the wall, smashed with sledgehammers, and lugged from one end of the building to the other. For what purpose, other than to wake the prisoners, she could not imagine.

  Then heavy cell doors would begin to open and close, keys would rattle and clank, trolleys would clatter along corridors. The harsh voices of the wardresses would shout orders — ‘Come on, slop aht!’

  ‘Rise and shine, dress yersel — you’ve two floors to scrub and the loos to clean afore breakfast!’

  ‘Jump to it, there! This ain’t no workhouse or rest ‘ome! ‘Olloway’s a clean prison!’

  Sarah lay on her cold hard bed and listened to the clanking and the rattles and the voices. Despite her discomfort she was glad they were so loud. All night she lay in cold isolation, drifting in and out of dreams and memories. Once she had believed Jonathan was there in the cell with her, and she had reached out to touch him, only to find her hand waving feebly through cold, shadowy air. She had screamed abuse at him and h
ad thought she heard a male voice answering back, not Jonathan’s voice, but her father’s . . .

  But none of her night voices were nearly as loud or as real or as inescapably human as the harsh screech of the wardresses.

  They woke Sarah up with a start, to the gritty reality of the cold stone cell, the grey light of dawn, the clank and crash of buckets and the hard wooden slats under her back.

  She lay and listened. Each voice had a different tone; the words and the volume were much the same but the personality each revealed was different. Some, she was sure, really meant what they said. They hated and despised the prisoners, they were truly obsessed with the cleanliness of the prison. Perhaps it had to be kept clean, Sarah thought, because that is the only way to wash away the defiling touch of the criminals. Some of these wardresses think we are a disease, so they force us to scrub away every dirty mark we make. Then there were others who varied their tone, according to which prisoner they spoke to. That seemed especially cruel, Sarah thought. A wardress would be hearty, jovial with one woman, and then address the prisoner in the cell next door with virulent hatred. So that the second prisoner was denied even the small hint of human sympathy that had been shown to her neighbour.

  No one came into Sarah’s cell until nearly seven. There was no point. Though she was a third division prisoner she refused to do any duties, and there was no way they could make her, so they left her alone. She supposed it was tacitly assumed that the forced feeding was punishment enough. But they insisted her cell was tidy, and she agreed to that herself. It gave her a touch of self-respect and a sense of a new day begun. So at six every morning she got up, folded her bedclothes neatly, dusted the table and chairs and bedhead with a little cloth they had left her, and combed her hair.

  The comb was her greatest luxury. It was a small bone comb which she had been allowed to keep. It had been in the pocket of her skirt when she had been arrested. It was the one bit of civilisation that she had retained, the one link with her dressing room at home. So every morning when she had folded the grey blankets on her wooden bed, she sat at the scarred wooden table and combed her hair, slowly, diligently, luxuriously. As though there were a gilt mirror in front of her, and ivory-backed hairbrushes and pots of face cream and makeup and phials of scent scattered around the dressing table in front of her, instead of . . .

  ‘Porridge, yer ladyship.’

  The young wardress stood in the cell door, a mocking smile on her face. She was the big, sturdy young woman, Ruth Harkness, the one Sarah thought of as a coalheaver because of her build and the strength of her forearms. Her face was heavy, with wide eyes, solid flat features and a skin that was usually pale and unhealthy. Because of spending so much time in the dank, foetid air of a prison, Sarah thought. The wardress glared at Sarah with an intent, sullen malevolence. Damn you, Sarah thought. What’s the matter with the girl, is she jealous because I have this wonderful room to myself?

  She ignored the wardress for a moment, continuing to comb her hair and gaze at the wall as though it were a fine, inlaid mirror. Then she sighed and indicated the table in front of her. ‘Thank you. You may put it down there for a moment if you must, and take it away again when you are ready.’

  The young woman scowled. ‘Right then.’ She dumped the steaming bowl of porridge in the middle of the table, rather closer to Sarah than Sarah had intended, and plonked a spoon beside it. Then she stood back and watched, arms folded, with a deliberate, hostile glare.

  The draught from the door sent the steam from the porridge into Sarah’s face. The scent of it was, as usual, delectable. Sarah sat quite still and took a deep, nourishing breath. Then a second and a third. Then, very carefully, she began to comb her hair again.

  The wardress stared for several minutes without speaking. Sarah glanced at her once, then ignored her. She combed all the right side of her head very thoroughly, then the back, then the left. When she was beginning on her fringe the wardress said: ‘You’re a stupid, bloody-minded madwoman, Becket. Do you know that?’

  Surprised, Sarah glanced at her, and smiled ironically.

  ‘Well, Miss Harkness, how kind. That is really the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week.’

  The wardress scowled once more. ‘I didn’t mean it kind. I meant it’s stupid, to turn up your nose at good healthy food like that, when you know that later in the day the doctors’ll be shoving tubes down your throat again, and like as not I’ll have to help them. It don’t get you nowhere, so why bother?’

  Sarah combed her fringe carefully before she answered. Her pause was not meant as a snub; it was because she was so unused to having a real conversation — even an argument — with anyone, that she found the words did not come straight away. At least it was a sign that this woman cared, for her to break the rules and speak to her at all.

  ‘What would you do then?’ she said at last.

  ‘Me? What do you mean?’

  ‘If you were in my position. You know why I’m here, you’ve seen how I’m treated. You’re a woman too, Miss Harkness. What would you do?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be in your position, would I? I don’t break the law.’

  ‘No, but imagine for a moment if you did. Not to steal or hurt anyone or to be unkind, but the way I did it, to help other women. And then if you had decided not to eat as a protest against the injustice of the law. Would you give in just because doctors came and tortured you with the loathsome tube?’

  ‘Well, I . . .’ The young wardress hesitated. Sarah saw the confusion drift across her face and thought, now she’ll walk out because she can’t answer and anyway she isn’t supposed to talk to prisoners at all.

  But to her surprise Miss Harkness stayed. And said: ‘I wouldn’t let no man do that to me, never. I’d punch his face and kick him where it hurts, if I could. That’d stop him!’ She laughed. ‘I’m strong, see. Men don’t mess with me!’

  ‘Maybe not. But if the man brought in four or five strong women like yourself to hold you down, as you held me?’

  ‘That ain’t the point. I’m not daft like you, I don’t break no laws. Listen, Becket.’ She stepped forward, and Sarah realised, by the intensity of the look in her eyes, the low, earnest voice, that this was what Miss Harkness had really come to say. ‘That ain’t true what you told Dr Armstrong the other day. You’re wrong about it and you’re daft to say it, too. The doctors here are respectable, decent men. They wouldn’t have this job if they weren’t! Holloway’s a clean prison!’

  Sarah stared at her, astonished. There was definitely a flush in the girl’s pallid cheeks, and her solid arms and bosom were trembling with emotion. She had the impression the young woman might hit her at any moment, or scream or break down in tears.

  Sarah put down her comb and said, very carefully: ‘That’s very interesting. Why are you so sure?’

  ‘Sure about what?’

  ‘Sure that what I said was untrue.’

  ‘Well, because . . . it’s obvious, ain’t it? I mean, a man like that, he’s a respectable doctor, he’s got his name, his reputation to think of. He wouldn’t never do a thing like that. Even if there was money in it, he’d be daft to take the risks.’

  Silence. The clang of buckets in the corridor. Sarah’s mind was racing. There’s something strange here, she thought, something very odd. And I have only a couple of minutes to find out what it is, because wardresses never stay to talk, they’re not allowed. Why does this one want to?

  ‘So you think there’s money in it, do you?’

  Miss Harkness laughed scornfully. ‘‘Course there is! You la-di-dah fancy suffragettes, you don’t understand nothing, do yer? Best way for a girl to earn a few bob - most of the East End does it, given ‘alf a chance. Not for posh hoity-toity ladies like you, you wouldn’t understand. But girls who can only get a job shoving bristles into brushes fifteen hours a day in some cellar, or fishing rubbish out the sewers to sell for a few coppers - ‘course they go on the game if they can. Good luck to ‘em I say. I might have, too
, if I’d ‘ad the looks. And if my old man hadn’t brought me up proper. To know what’s right and what’s a sin.’

  ‘Children too?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Miss Harkness glanced over her shoulder, then said bitterly: ‘‘Course that’s a sin, that’s disgustin’, that is. But it happens.’

  ‘And people don’t mind?’

  ‘They do, yeah. Me, I think it’s sick. But they ain’t got no religion, people like that. They’re not respectable, like you an’ me - they don’t understand that it’s a sin you can be damned for. They just think it’s better’n starving, most of ‘em. After all, some of ‘em ain’t got no dad an’ their mum’s inside. An’ the mums encourage ‘em, so’s they get clothes on their backs an’ food in their gobs, poor little mites.’

  So it does happen, Sarah thought. And this girl knows it does. Very quietly and calmly, she said: ‘But you must understand, that sort of dreadful choice is exactly the sort of thing we suffragettes are fighting against. Mrs Pankhurst is not rich, you know — she has worked among poor women all her life, and so has her daughter Sylvia and hundreds of others. And we do think it’s wrong — very wrong — for women and young girls to be exploited in this way or any other. It’s all part of men’s inhumanity to women. Of course there should be decent work and proper wages so women don’t starve. But the only way for us to get that is to get the vote.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get it by telling lies about Dr Armstrong! He’s respectable, he couldn’t be involved in wicked things like that. He says you’re a madwoman, now, and I believe he’s right!’

  ‘Do you really think I’m mad?’

  ‘If he says so. Yes, ‘course I do.’ The wardress’s eyes bored into Sarah’s with hatred and distrust, then looked away hurriedly above her head at the wall, as she had been trained to do. But she had also been trained not to talk to prisoners at all.

  Sarah took a deep breath, pressing her fingertips on the table in front of her until they went white. She felt anger rising in her and struggled to control it.