Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  ‘Over there, and be quick about it. The van’ll be ‘ere soon, and this lot’s not ‘alf full.’

  A strange wardress’s voice came to her and somehow in a moment the panic was gone. The calm bullying certainty of it — I don’t want to return to that, she thought. That and the foul medicine of that doctor. I have to take this chance — if Ruth Harkness is right, I’m lucky to be still alive.

  Further away, she could hear shouting and banging from the landing upstairs and she thought: those brave women will be punished for this if I call out now and the escape is discovered. And Ruth Harkness will be locked up, too. I will have betrayed someone who’s risked everything for me — and let down all those who are waiting outside, just because I can’t bear half an hour or so in a basket. Look, I can breathe, it’s easy. There’s air coming through these gaps. I can even see a little — is that dark shape a woman’s dress?

  For a moment she stared but she could see nothing distinct, and it made her eyes ache, so she gave up and closed them. It was not uncomfortable here, among the bundled sheets and dresses, when she got used to it and wriggled free from the hard lumps that one or two had tangled themselves into. Her legs were bent awkwardly, but she had her arms in front of her, humping a bundle of cloth under her head like a pillow. For a while she listened intently, taking in every nuance of sound from outside. The noise upstairs carried on for a while, grew louder and then stopped. A couple more prisoners came into the room — she heard the slither and slop of their ill-fitting shoes across the floor, the flop of the sheets as they threw them into the other baskets, the creak as those baskets were closed and strapped tight. Then silence.

  She was alone.

  Sarah was so tired . . . The laundry room was warmer than any she had been in for days, the sheets softer than her bed at home. Without intending to or even realising it, she fell asleep.

  It was the longest morning of Ruth’s life.

  The riot on the upper landing went on for nearly quarter of an hour. Ruth had passed Mrs Watson’s message to only two suffragette prisoners, but they — bless them, she thought now — had managed to pass it on to three more. These five women, all of whose cells were open for the change of linen, had seized sluice buckets, cups, brooms and mops, and marched up and down the landing banging and shouting out songs and slogans as loud as they could. The other prisoners, startled and amused, egged them on, and Mrs Canning and her warders found their way obstructed by women carrying piles of linen and offering to help in the most useless way possible.

  When Ruth arrived on the landing, the five suffragettes had not only linked arms across the corridor, but thrust two broom handles behind their backs, which they gripped with their elbows while they clasped hands in front. This had the effect of making them into a completely solid straight line which stretched right across the corridor. No one woman could be moved in any direction unless all the other five went that way, too — and this they resolutely refused to do.

  Singing and chanting slogans all the way, they backed slowly along the corridor towards the sluice, and jammed themselves across its doorway. All the wardresses were in front of them; there was only one elderly prisoner behind in the sluice itself, and she sat there on an upturned bucket, cackling helplessly with laughter.

  Eventually, by dint of much pushing and slapping and punching, the five women were disentangled and locked into their cells. Ruth was quite prominent in the struggle, and frogmarched one of the ringleaders, Mary Lethwaite, along the corridor past Mrs Canning, who was outraged.

  ‘Shameless baggage!’ Mrs Canning yelled. ‘You ain’t fit to be in a decent prison like Holloway. You ought to be whipped!’

  ‘Votes for Women!’ Mary Lethwaite yelled back. ‘Set us free, then, if you don’t like us here. We’ll get out anyway, so save yourself the trouble! Wait till this afternoon, fat cow!’

  For a terrible moment Ruth thought that Mary, carried away by the excitement, might give the game away. Ruth swung her roughly by the arm so that she cried out with pain, and then, when she had slammed the door behind them in Mary’s cell, said breathlessly: ‘Sorry if I ‘urt you. Thanks. It was magnificent!’

  Mary rubbed her arm, grinning ruefully. ‘It was fun! But did it work? Did she get out?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. Keep your trap shut for another couple of hours, whatever you do. Then you can claim it was all your own work.’

  ‘Without knowing how we did it, eh?’ Mary said.

  ‘Yes. Best way.’ Ruth turned quickly, went out of the door and locked it. Mary and the other woman had been asked to make a disturbance to cover Sarah’s escape, but they had not been told how she was going to get out. It was best like that, Ruth thought, and Alice Watson had agreed. She and Mrs Watson had discussed the plan two nights ago, slowly and painstakingly going through every detail. Now they would see if those plans would work out.

  On the landing Mrs Canning was hot, red-faced, angry.

  ‘Shut the whole lot of them up in their cells for an hour and let them cool down. Blasted suffragettes!’ she muttered furiously. ‘Has that laundry gone yet?’

  That was what Ruth wanted to know, but she dared not go down to find out. Instead, she went across to her own landing, where Sarah’s cell lay quiet, the door closed, one blanket rolled into a sausage with another spread over it, in the hope that a casual observer might think the prisoner was asleep. She locked the door and went along the corridor to where a window looked out towards the main gates. They were just closing. Did that mean the laundry van had just gone out? She couldn’t see, but she hoped so.

  For the next half hour nothing unusual happened. Ruth let out one or two of her trusty prisoners and set them to cleaning the floor. The noise in the prison died down. Ruth began to breathe more easily.

  It was Alice Watson who convinced me to do this, she thought. I was impressed by Sarah Becket, of course I was, but I wouldn’t have done it for her alone. That Mrs Watson has persuaded me to change my life.

  She had sat with Alice Watson for hours in the little upstairs office in Clements Inn, and afterwards had accompanied her home. Mrs Watson lived in a small top-floor flat in Blackfriars. It was neat, comfortable, unpretentious, with soft green curtains, faded brown carpets, and photographs on the walls of groups of young women in white dresses and pinafores with high white bonnets with badges on. In the middle of each group sat a proud, younger version of Alice Watson.

  Ruth had been nearly right when she thought Mrs Watson was a headmistress. In fact she had once trained nurses in hospital. She had probably been very good at it, Ruth thought. Certainly she found the woman easier to talk to than any other middle-aged lady she had met for years.

  To her surprise, Ruth learned that Alice Watson had come from an unpretentious lower middle-class background, little better than her own. Her parents had not wanted her to become a nurse; that had been a struggle. But, like Ruth, she had a strong sense of right and wrong.

  ‘They used to think nurses were prostitutes, too — do you know that?’ she had said, as they sat drinking tea at the little table in her window, looking down on the tops of trams and drays in the street below. ‘Men thought they could do what they liked with them, especially the doctors. That’s why the uniform was so important. It marked us out, made it clear we were doing something decent and clean for society. I can understand you felt something of the same for the prison service.’

  ‘Not any more.’ Ruth had told her of her childhood struggle to get a decent job, the pride she felt in her own little flat, her hopes of a decent life with her fiancé, George Smith. ‘If I help you now,’ she said. ‘I’ll lose all that.’

  ‘It’s possible, certainly,’ Alice said. ‘And I’ve no right to ask you to take that risk. I’m just grateful for what you’ve done already. If you decided to do no more, I couldn’t complain.’ She paused, looking at Ruth calmly through her round spectacles. Waiting perhaps for me to get up and walk out, Ruth thought later.

  But she hadn’t. So Alice had
poured her some more tea and said: ‘If you go on, then of course we’d welcome you and there’d be a lot of companionship. But it’s not easy. You should be clear in your mind that what you’re doing is right.’

  That, for Ruth, was the crux of the matter. She was a very moral young woman. She had gone into the prison service not just because it was a secure, respectable job, but because she had believed she would be on the side of right against wrong. Of Christian against Apollyon. Now, with a man like Martin Armstrong in authority over her, she felt that was not true. Either she kept her job and served the devil, or left it, and served God.

  Alice Watson had listened to her explanation, and smiled. Then she reached out and patted Ruth’s hand.

  ‘You are a brave young woman,’ she said. ‘I am proud to have met you. It is not easy, what you are doing, but let us not despair too soon. If everything we have planned works out as I hope, there will be no reason for anyone to point a finger at you. They will blame the suffragette movement, which is too big to arrest and imprison all at once, however hard they try.’

  Ruth remembered that conversation now as she stood in the upper corridor of Holloway, a few yards away from Sarah Becket’s empty cell. Certainly they had planned carefully, and it had gone well enough so far. Alice Watson had been in Holloway herself, twice in the past five years, and that had been invaluable. But, as a prisoner, she remembered long empty stretches of utter boredom, when she was left in her cell to think or starve or watch a sunbeam crawl slowly across the floor. To her it seemed quite likely that no one would notice Sarah’s absence for two hours.

  To Ruth, now, feeling the sweat prickle on the back of her neck, it seemed almost impossible.

  Prison, to a wardress, was a busy place, with countless duties to get through in the course of a day. Not the least of these was keeping an eye on the prisoners. Spying on them through the judas hole as you went down the corridor, just to see what they were doing.

  Any wardress could do that, on any landing. Any time.

  They had decided on two hours for a number of reasons. They had hoped to get Sarah in the basket between nine-thirty and nine forty-five, ready for the van which usually arrived and began to load at about ten to ten. It then took the best part of an hour, perhaps longer, to splutter its way through the traffic to High Holborn and stack the baskets in the large shed beside the laundry for the laundresses to empty. That was the most frightening part, Ruth thought. There would be little enough air in those baskets as it was, and the men might easily stack one or even two baskets on top of the one Sarah was in.

  Then the drivers usually stopped for a cup of tea and a chat in the laundry. They were not part of the plot, nor were all of the laundresses. So it would take at least another half an hour, maybe more, before Ruth could be reasonably certain that Sarah was out of her basket, and free.

  Then she could sound the alarm. They had agreed that if Ruth herself found that Sarah was missing, it would point less suspicion at her. Providing I can act well enough, Ruth thought.

  I’ll blush, my hands will shake, sweat will pour down my face. I was brought up to never tell lies . . .

  She walked out onto the landing to look at the clock in the main hall. Five to eleven. Another forty minutes. Then she would be safe.

  Safe?

  ‘Where is the girl, damn it? Miss Harkness? Ah, there she is. Come here, girl. I need you.’

  Oh my God. Ruth turned, feeling her mouth dry, sweat damp in her palms. Dr Armstrong, climbing the iron staircase towards her. Control your face, girl. Don’t show any nerves now.

  ‘Yes, doctor?’

  ‘Just doing my rounds on your landing. Thought I’d call in on that blasted suffragette of yours. What’s her name — Bucket?’

  If it was meant as a joke even he did not seem to think it was a good one. Of course he knew her name, very well — as she knew his. Ruth looked at him and saw that behind the bluff, confident authority of his face there was something . . . what was it? Fear? Anxiety? Guilt? The eyes seemed smaller, darker, more sunken than she remembered. He was not examining her, quite the reverse. His gaze shifted away. He was sweating!

  Ruth’s mind worked fast. Five to eleven, it was too early. Sarah was still in the basket, she might be caught. Why is Armstrong sweating like that?

  Because of that medicine he gave her last night? Perhaps it was too much. He thinks she may be dead!

  ‘Becket? She’s asleep, Dr Armstrong.’

  ‘What’s that you say, girl? Asleep, at this time of day? What is this, a rest home? Don’t you get the damn convicts up?’

  Not when they’ve been murdered, no. We leave them to lie until the doctors find them.

  I was right. He’s sweating more now. I’ve never seen guilt written so plain on a man’s face. Murderer!

  ‘Well, we’d better go along and wake her up. Got your keys?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Doctor.’

  Ruth turned and led the way along the corridor. But as she walked, she thought, this is no good. I’ve aroused his suspicions when I shouldn’t have. He has to go in now because there’s something unusual. And it’s too early!

  She stopped outside the cell door, glanced through, and said: ‘She’s still asleep, Doctor. It seems a pity to wake her. She was up early this morning, carrying the linen downstairs. I expect that tired her. She’s only just started eating again, as you know.’

  Dr Armstrong hesitated. ‘Up early this morning, you say?’ Is that disappointment on his face? ‘What was she like then?’

  ‘Oh, a bit tired, I would say. Not very strong, but all right in her mind. I expect the exercise was too much for her. That’s probably why she’s sleeping now.’

  ‘What do you know about what’s all right in her mind?’ Dr Armstrong took a deep breath, staring at the cell door as though coming to a decision.

  Go away, please! Let him come back in an hour and it won’t matter, please God. Ruth prayed, her hands clasped demurely by her belt where she thought Armstrong wouldn’t notice. Our Father, who art in heaven . . .

  ‘Open the door, girl.’

  ‘You’re going to wake her up?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I haven’t got time to fool about. It’s a medical matter. Come on, you’ve got your keys, haven’t you? Hurry up!’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  Ruth sighed, unclasped her hands, and slipped the key into the lock. As she did so a vision of the clock in the main hall came into her mind. Forty minutes too soon, she thought.

  Eleven o’clock . . .

  When Sarah awoke it was because the basket was moving, swaying abruptly and violent up and then down again, sideways, being carried somewhere at a slant so that she slid down towards her own feet and felt sure she would break through the wicker walls entirely at any moment. There were men’s voices, grunting softly with the effort, swearing. Then without any warning the basket seemed to fly through the air and land with a crash on an echoing wooden floor.

  It was dark. Cautiously, she stretched so that she was no longer bundled into a ball around her own feet, and moved until her head once again came into contact with the basket wall at the far end. It was less comfortable than before. The sheets had tangled themselves in a perverse way around and under her and for a moment she had a second panic attack. This time she would really not be able to breathe, and would have to scream. Another basket was heaved on top of hers, so that the wicker lid bent down, inwards, touching her head. Sarah could hear the men outside and stuffed a sheet into her own mouth so if she did scream she would not be heard. Then they were gone.

  When they came again more baskets were slammed in behind and around hers, and with the noise that they made she knew that the men were so distant and so busy that they would not hear her anyway unless she really yelled out loud, and she was not going to do that. Not now. She was going to escape!

  It was really hot and close in the basket by now and she did have trouble breathing, but for a while she felt too elated to care. There was panic
again when the van doors closed but then joy when the engine started and the van began to move — she actually sang for a moment and then felt suddenly, horribly sick with the jolting and the smell and the close, stale air. But she could still breathe. She took shallow, careful breaths with the top of her lungs only and thought, irrelevantly, this is how the midwife told me I should breathe when my baby was born, only it never was born. Not alive. Perhaps this is my delivery instead. I am being delivered. I am delivering myself.

  The van stopped with the engine running and men talked outside for ages and ages. Sarah thought, miserably, they’ve discovered I’m missing and they’ve sent someone to search all the baskets and I’ll be found and dragged out and . . . The van started.

  This time it drove quite steadily with only brief stops here and there in the traffic for a long time and in the hot close air Sarah began to sweat and then doze again, so that she had no idea how long it was before the engine was switched off and there was a crash of doors opening. A little grey light seeped into the basket which let her see the weave of the lid. Then she heard grunting from the men again and the van bounced upwards on its springs as the first baskets were lifted out and there was more light. The basket came off the top of Sarah’s lid and it was her turn; she felt herself dragged along the floor of the van and then lifted swooping into the air, with what seemed a louder grunt and curse from the porters.

  Like a queen, she thought. Cleopatra wrapped in a carpet. She smiled to herself, enjoying the unpredictable jolting motion, and then panic came again — who opens these baskets?

  If these men open them they’ll take me straight back to Holloway and it’ll all have been for nothing, all wasted. So I must — her basket was slammed down to the floor so suddenly that she banged her head on the lid and the bile came into her mouth and she thought nothing, nothing at all for a long moment until she came to and realised that the men had gone away.

  Then no one came for quite a long time. Slowly, all the joy and anticipation drained out of her and a small voice began to whisper: it’s all a mistake, no one knows you’re in here and you’ll have to wait for hours and hours, perhaps they don’t even open the baskets to begin the washing until tomorrow and by then you’ll be too cramped to move, and also . . .