Elizabeth found it impossible to resolve all the questions posed by the play. She ended on a note of doubt.
She dispatched the play to Constance only a few days before the fateful trip to Downing Street which ended in her arrest. She had no great hope that Constance would produce it. She might wish to, but ‘Too controversial – I have the company to think of,’ would be her excuse. Constance still belonged to Mrs Fawcett’s National Society for Women’s Suffrage, which campaigned politically for the vote for women, but repudiated the Pankhursts’ Women’s Social and Political Union. As the vote had been denied over and over again to women by the government in power, bill after bill to secure the vote for at least some women having been talked out of Parliament, Mrs Pankhurst’s movement had become increasingly militant. Women started fires, broke windows and disturbed public meetings. Constance would not support this. ‘The good of the company’ was the explanation she gave.
And perhaps she was right, Elizabeth thought, from her hard bed in the cell. At any rate, Constance was not in prison.
Elizabeth had gone to Downing Street with a group of other women, and had broken a window with half a brick she had concealed inside her muff. She had stayed in the street beside a friend, Jenny Holmes, as the police came up. Jenny had been arrested before, imprisoned before, and had been released hastily before she died on hunger strike. Her husband, a barrister, was threatening separation if she went on. Jenny, standing outside the Prime Minister’s house, had uttered a last cry, ‘Betrayed again!’ before they arrested her.
Elizabeth was also arrested, and was charged at Savile Row police station along with a group of other women who had that day gone round the West End breaking shop windows. On her previous appearance in court she had been bound over to keep the peace, but as the magistrate pointed out, she had not done so. He sentenced her to two months in gaol. The gaols were divided into divisions. In the first division, where Elizabeth had been placed, more civilised conditions prevailed. But she knew her friends were suffering in the notorious third division. If on hunger strike, they were being forcibly fed there.
She was in a state of conflict. Her support for the militant wing of the suffragette movement had, it seemed, lost her both her career and her lover. In spite of all that, she was still in the first division. She wondered if she could bring herself to go on hunger strike. The authorities now held down hunger-striking women and forcibly fed them with pap through rubber tubes thrust down their throats. Teeth could be broken. A mistake could lead to serious damage, often to the larynx – a consequence even more terrible for an actress. Elizabeth had lost so much already. Now she asked herself – could she endure even more? And how much more would this movement ask of her? She had been shocked by the savagery of the police when they had bundled the women into the police wagon. A constable had kicked her in the side as she lay on the floor, then had pulled her up roughly and pushed her so hard on to one of the wooden benches that she’d hit her head on the side of the wagon. She knew that these things happened, of course, or worse, but her first encounter with police violence still shocked her.
Jenny Holmes took it for granted. She said that the police and the men who attacked their demonstrations were getting more ferocious. There were thugs with hanks of hair torn from women’s heads in their buttonholes as trophies, she said. ‘What startles one most,’ she told Elizabeth, ‘is when men of one’s own class spit on and attack one. One begins to think that what all men have in common is a preparedness to attack women who defy them, whether the men are coal-heavers or Members of Parliament. Once you’ve seen that, you can never go back. Society begins to look like a sham.’
‘But we struggle on,’ remarked a snub-nosed young woman opposite Elizabeth. She took off her hat and shook a shock of short blonde curls about. ‘If they pull your hair out, cut it so they can’t get a hold. That was my solution. It made my mother cry,’ she said reflectively.
‘What did she tell you, Mary?’ asked Jenny Holmes.
‘If I’m sent to prison this time, she won’t let me back in the house. A bad influence on my sisters, she said.’ She seemed philosophical about this. ‘You’re an actress, aren’t you?’ she asked Elizabeth.
‘I was. I’ve been dismissed from the company,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘They can’t afford to have me in prison.’
‘This is a costly movement,’ said Mary. She seemed undeterred by this. ‘You can always apologise to the bench and say you’ve seen the error of your ways and will never do it again. Lots do. You can’t blame them.’
Elizabeth shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. What is it that makes everyone else able to go on? How often have you been to prison?’
‘Six times,’ Mary said.
Jenny Holmes said to Elizabeth, in a clear, low voice, ‘My sister is a doctor. She tells me that when you talk to women, as their doctor and as another woman, you hear stories of such horror you feel as if you were standing on the brink of hell. Of the seduction of girls by members of their own families. Of rape concealed by women and locked in their hearts until, at last, they tell her, and weep. Of hidden childbirth. Of violence inside the home. At first she thought she was hearing of unusual horrors. Then she began to understand how common these events are. I believe that many women who campaign for the vote are those who have been abused or have seen those they love abused in a number of ways. The vote is the public issue, but behind it lies so much more. The cruelty and suffering they experience now is less than they have already suffered privately. We cannot expect everyone to have that kind of fortitude.’
She had spoken quietly, her eyes fixed on the floor, so it could be taken by the other arrested women as a private conversation between herself and Elizabeth. But as she spoke, a silence fell. Only the sound of the horses’ hooves clattering on through the streets could be heard.
Jenny herself was disturbed by this silence. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken,’ she said. ‘We have the cells ahead of us. That’s enough to bear.’
One replied, ‘You have only said what I have often suspected myself.’ Another woman said from the darkness, ‘The willingness of respectable men to beat suffragettes comes as no surprise to many of us. We have seen too much in our own homes.’
‘The women’s shame affected my sister very much,’ Jenny said. ‘She said that it was as if they believed they were responsible for what had happened to them, although of course they were innocent.’
Strangely, it was the thought of all this hidden sadness, more than the expression of impatient rage on the face of the magistrate at the hearing, which prevented Elizabeth, at that critical moment when she could have apologised, from actually doing so. She scarcely thought of the cause, at that moment, only of what Jenny’s sister had said. In addition, the magistrate on his bench bore a surprising resemblance to Robert Warren in one of his mindless authoritarian rages. Those two things were enough – Elizabeth pleaded guilty, and that was the only word she spoke in court.
Constance, Gerry, Harry and Lilah had taken the trouble to get very precise information about the morning’s events, and as soon as they heard the news had evidently hurled themselves into a cab and come to the court. They watched her in the dock, and as she was taken down to the cells, shaking but pretending not to be upset.
Once in the cell, with an elderly woman she did not know, Elizabeth subsided to the floor, where Constance and Harry found her, sitting against a wall.
Harry’s face was grief-stricken. ‘My God, Elizabeth, why did you do it?’ he asked.
Constance seemed more angry than anything else. ‘Idiot!’ she proclaimed. ‘Was it for this that I rescued you from the life of a pupil-teacher in Aberdeen?’
‘It wasn’t Aberdeen,’ Elizabeth said from the floor.
‘I’m choking with the smell of unwashed bodies and disinfectant,’ Constance declared, putting a handkerchief to her nose. ‘Well, Harry’s going to pull strings with his cousin in the Home Office – already has, which is why we’re h
ere.’
‘I’ve been sentenced to two months in gaol,’ Elizabeth observed.
‘Yes, but it seems there’s gaol and gaol,’ Harry said. ‘You either go among the common prisoners, wearing prison clothes with stripes on, working at scrubbing floors or in the laundry or whatever – or you’re consigned to another section where you can wear your own clothes, have food sent in, receive visitors.’
Elizabeth, suffering from shock, said, ‘I know,’ in a numbed voice. ‘Harry – I’m sorry.’
‘So am I, Elizabeth. So am I,’ he said bitterly.
‘I expect your family will read about me in the papers.’
‘Do you really think that’s all I mind about?’ he demanded. ‘Of course it’s not. I don’t even mind you going to prison –not that much, anyway. But this business is driving a wedge between us. How can I go on like this, with your constant speaking engagements, business about the vote, and, on top of that, the threat of arrest hanging over us? How can I, Elizabeth?’
‘I’m sorry, Harry. I’d release you if there were anything to release you from,’ Elizabeth replied in the same low voice.
During this exchange, Constance had tactfully turned her back. Now she turned round. ‘Joan of Arc!’ she cried. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You’re playing Joan of Arc. Well, never mind, I’ll save you in spite of yourself With that, she turned and left in a flurry.
‘I’ll see what I can do to get you into the first division,’ Harry said. He paused. ‘Please, Elizabeth. When you come out, don’t do this again. At least in prison you’ll have an opportunity to think. Think, for God’s sake. I’m willing to marry you. You know that.’
Elizabeth, exhausted and shocked, just wanted him to go away. She answered, ‘I will think, Harry. But perhaps you’d better get back to the theatre.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Because Constance has decided to forget about The Lady of the Camellias and wants to put Daughters of the Storm into production as soon as possible.’
Elizabeth hardly took this in. ‘Goodbye, Harry. I’m sorry I can’t get up. My legs are still shaking.’
‘Oh, my love,’ sighed Harry in despair. ‘Why did you do it? Why do any of you do it?’
Five minutes after he left, the van arrived to take the prisoners to Holloway. There followed the grim ritual of separation from personal property and clothing, the bath in grimy water supervised by a wardress, the re-dressing in a dress and apron on which arrows were printed, and the long walk to the cells.
For a week Elizabeth lived as a common prisoner, among thieves, prostitutes, some suffragettes. She scrubbed floors, ate the poor food – porridge, hard bread, watery stews – given to the prisoners, in a life punctuated by clanging bells and banging doors. She had little to say even to Jenny Holmes. She seemed to be living in a dream. At the end of the week she was transferred to the first division. Her clothes were returned and she was informed of her privileges. She told the wardress, ‘Thank you. I desire nothing. I should prefer to see no visitors.’ She felt guilty about deserting the others.
She opened a batch of letters which had arrived. There were messages of support and friendship. There was also abuse. One letter, from a woman who had seen her, oddly enough, as Portia, declared that she would never attend another of her performances. But it was only the letter from Robert Warren which managed, momentarily, to puncture her numbness. In it he said that she brought disgrace to her family by her flouting of the law. He had known all along that allowing her to join a theatrical company had been the worst thing possible. It had increased her natural tendency to defy authority of any kind. She was cursed with a spirit he had laboured in vain to control. Now the inevitable had come about. Elizabeth’s mother had gladly agreed to forget she had ever had a daughter. Elizabeth’s name would never be mentioned in the house again. He hoped she was pleased to have sacrificed her mother’s happiness to follow her own desires.
Elizabeth, wearily putting the letter down on her bunk, felt very depressed. She had known that her imprisonment would upset Bella, but as ever, there seemed no way in which anything she herself wanted to do would not break her mother’s heart. Bella’s life would only be tolerable if Elizabeth led an existence she would not, or could not, lead. So she had managed to lose Harry and her career, and blight her mother’s life – so be it, thought Elizabeth Armitage as, deeply weary, she fell into a stupefied sleep on her hard bed in Holloway Prison.
Chapter Thirty–One
November 1911
Lily Strugnell awoke, for her bedroom fire had died down overnight. From outside in the street came the sound of heavy boots. Workers were off to the first shift in the docks, she imagined. She gave a moan and thought of London. She was used to touring, God knew. She hadn’t spent a complete year in London for five years. At sixteen she’d been round the second-rate halls of Scotland and the north of England, sharing rooms with acrobats and chorus girls, pleading with the landlady for a cup of cocoa on a cold night after giving three performances in a day, waiting in smoky station buffets, sitting in railway carriages on seemingly endless journeys, Glasgow to Aberdeen, Aberdeen to Macclesfield, Macclesfield to Hove. The only difference was that now the theatres were bigger, the money better, she went first-class on the train and stayed at hotels instead of boarding houses. And that now, she wasn’t enjoying it any more.
Her present living quarters, in a working-class area of Glasgow, was the result of a quarrel with the hotel management, and a hasty rearrangement of accommodation. She had felt comfortable there in the little terraced house. Now, though, she was suddenly wide awake – and miserable. She listened to the clatter of boots, a voice singing, a man calling, ‘Has your woman had the bairn, yet, Jock?’ and an incomprehensible reply. This, with its suggestion of a home, a wife, a new baby fathered by Jock, saddened her more. She knew it was silly to envy this unknown man his hard life. But she did. She was hundreds of miles from home, alone, cold and badly missing Jack. Perhaps – probably, she recognised – she missed him more keenly than he missed her. At least he was at home, leading his normal life, with friends round for drinks, his usual training routine, his suits in his wardrobe, eating dinner from his own table – while she was away, always arriving, packing and unpacking, always departing, always on the move, sleeping in different beds. Once she hadn’t minded touring, even found it exciting. At sixteen she’d loved it, faced with different places and audiences all the time. The starchy ones in Edinburgh, where you had to watch your step in case you were too saucy, the tough, fast-thinking Glaswegians, who would have you for breakfast and the theatre manager for seconds if they didn’t like your act. They’d liked her in Glasgow, liked her fine, as the manager of the Pavilion told her; liked her then, and still did, though she was a Cockney.
Towards the end of her act the night before, two burly men had jumped out of their seats and done an energetic reel in the aisle. She’d stopped singing, pointed and got the spotlight on them as they stamped and swung each other by the arm. The audience roared and clapped. Yes, Lily thought. They liked her in Glasgow, they liked her in Edinburgh and Newcastle, and next day they were due to like her in Liverpool for a week, then Birmingham, then Manchester. She finally went back to London to play Cinderalla in a panto, but she’d lost her enthusiasm after months away. She was tired, she wanted to be in her own home.
She was beginning to remember the dream which must have woken her. It had been a realistic dream, quite unfantastic. In it, Jack had come to her in her dressing-room, the very one she had used that night at the Pavilion. He had worn a brown suit with a bowler, and a white carnation in his buttonhole. She had been in her wrapper, taking off her stage make-up. He had told her he was in love, and leaving her. He had said cruel things about her as she tried to interrupt, plead with him, ask for another chance. But he had finished what he was saying and left. She had run to the door and had watched him go down the corridor, hand in hand with a girl in a white dress, preceded by a man she had once worked with in London, Les Edwards, who w
as playing Chopin’s funeral march on his accordion. It had all been so real, so ordinary, even the accordionist. It might have been something which had actually happened – or, Lily thought in fear, would happen in the future. At all events, Lily, who believed in dreams, took it as a warning that Jack was now being, or would be in future, unfaithful to her.
He was always surrounded by women. She thought that on her last tour, the previous summer, he had been faithful to her, but then she had been playing the south coast mostly and was able to be at home from early Sunday until Monday. She thought, I’ve been faithful to him in spite of all the temptations. But Jack – what is Jack doing to me? She’d been too far away for too long. She had tried to go back to London from Newcastle on the Saturday night after the last show, but it had been snowing. The trains could not move.
Lily thought quickly that she must get to London. It would be a rush – she’d have to be back in Liverpool for the first house next day – but she must go. She could just manage it, if there was an early train from Glasgow this morning. She was on her feet in a flash, calling for the landlady, pushing things into a Gladstone bag. She was out into the darkness into a cab and at the station almost as quickly.
In the train she reflected that she should have asked the landlady to send a telegram to Streatham to say she was coming home, but then, she thought to herself, why warn Jack, if he’s up to something? And why should she have to telegraph her own house to say that she was on her way? Now, she thought, I can catch him red-handed. If anything’s going on, I’ll know the minute I get into the house.
She knew there’d been parties in her absence – the household bills Jack sent her were so heavy. She knew that Jack was buying suits, shirts and boots at her expense – he sent her those bills also. And, from the bills too, it appeared that Rose was never out of the dressmaker’s, nor her mother out of the doctor’s waiting room. There was a new carriage as well. She, Lily, was paying for everything now; Jack had spent the purse from his last fight quickly and there had been no new fight for six months. He had lost the last two. The American fight for the championship had never come off. Mo Laschmann, Jack said angrily, could not or would not find him another fight.
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