by Nicola Upson
It was good-humoured sparring on his part, something which they often lapsed into, but Josephine couldn’t be bothered to keep up with it. Unsettled by her conversation with Geraldine, shocked at the events which had suddenly overtaken her interest in the Sach and Walters case, and furious with herself for behaving like a guilty schoolgirl caught with Marta’s diary, she knew it was unfair of her to take her ill humour out on Archie but couldn’t seem to help herself, if only because he was there. ‘Good,’ she muttered, looking out of the window, ‘because I’ve got enough to think about without your sergeant finding work for idle hands.’
She was grateful that he knew her well enough to take the hint without questioning it, and neither of them spoke again until they were close to their destination. ‘There it is,’ he said, pointing over to the left, and Josephine had her first glimpse of Holloway, seen through the line of trees marking the junction of Parkhurst and Camden Roads. For reasons best known to the architect, the prison had been designed to resemble Warwick Castle, complete with high wall, imposing gateway and crenellated towers; it dominated the immediate skyline like a parody of its medieval prototype, built to keep people in rather than out. Archie parked the Daimler outside the main entrance and rang the bell in the huge studded gate. They waited, listening to a jangle of keys on the other side, and eventually a small wooden door within the larger gate was opened to admit them. Two rooms lay beyond, one cosy and oddly domestic, the other more functional and office-like; straight ahead, Josephine could see a steel-barred gate which presumably led into the prison yard and through to the main building. The gate officer took their names and glanced down the pages of an enormous book, then telephoned through to announce them. ‘Male officers aren’t allowed any further than this,’ he explained with a smile, ‘but someone will be across to take you over in a minute.’
‘Do you know Mary Size?’ Josephine asked Archie while they waited.
‘No, we’ve never met but I’ve heard a lot about her. Civil servants are notoriously parsimonious with their praise, but they have nothing but good things to say about what she’s achieved here.’
‘Celia’s the same. I don’t know quite what to expect, though—it must take a very singular sort of mind to want to spend your life in a place like this, and a formidable resilience to manage it so successfully.’
But the woman who arrived at the gatehouse a few minutes later was neither single-minded nor formidable, at least in appearance, and Josephine—who had expected to be fetched by a minion—took a moment to realise that this was in fact the deputy governor of Holloway. Mary Size must have been in her early fifties; she resembled every school teacher that Josephine had ever had, with a smart but anonymous suit, a no-nonsense attitude, and a face which defaulted to strict but was transformed easily to kindness with a smile. The gate officer wasn’t the slightest bit surprised by her arrival—clearly, Miss Size often came to meet her visitors—and the genuine pleasure in his greeting told Josephine more about the woman’s achievements here than a thousand civil servants could have done.
She smiled at Josephine, but dealt with the formality first. ‘Welcome to Holloway isn’t a phrase I often use, Inspector Penrose, and you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t say it now. I’m very sorry that you’ve come here today. Marjorie Baker was a girl with real spirit, and she’d just begun to blossom. I suppose I should know better, but it’s hard to believe that a personality like that can be so easily destroyed.’ Her voice held a soft Irish inflection which added to the warmth of her words, and Josephine got her first real sense of the girl whose death had brought them to the prison. ‘But I’m delighted to meet you at last, Miss Tey,’ she continued. ‘I can’t think why our paths have never crossed at the club, but Celia’s told me a lot about you, and of course I loved Richard of Bordeaux. I must have seen it half a dozen times or more.’
‘Good grief—perhaps it’s you who should be locked up,’ Josephine said without thinking, but Mary Size only laughed heartily.
‘You’re not the first person to say that, and I doubt you’ll be the last.’
‘Seriously, though—it really is very good of you to let me look round. I can imagine how busy you and your staff are, and writers digging up the past must be a nuisance.’
‘Nonsense—I hope you’ll find it valuable. As I said in my note, there’s no one left to my knowledge who was here during the period that interests you, but parts of the building itself have changed very little and I’ve dug out some old suffragette accounts of prison life for you—they’re later, obviously, but things won’t have changed much. Ah, this is Cicely McCall,’ she added, introducing a young woman dressed in a blue prison warder’s uniform who had just arrived. ‘She’s writing a book about the prison, so you couldn’t be in more knowledgeable hands. And it really is no trouble.’
‘Even so, I appreciate it. This isn’t a museum, after all—you must be more concerned about the future than former prisoners who are beyond your help.’
Mary Size looked at her, pleased, and Josephine sensed that she had just walked willingly into the subtlest of traps. ‘It’s funny you should say that,’ the deputy governor said, ‘but I do have an ulterior motive in inviting you here. I’m always keen that people in the public eye should see what we’re up to, and there’s still such a long way to go. We’ve got a good band of people on board now, many of them writers; Vera Brittain, of course, and Elizabeth Dashwood—E. M. Delafield, you know—has agreed to write a foreword to Cicely’s book. I hope you might be persuaded to join us.’ There was a twinkle in her eye, and Josephine could easily understand how people were persuaded to do anything she asked, but she had never seen herself as a campaigner and just smiled non-committally. Even so, she was impressed; harnessing the Provincial Lady herself to prison reform was quite a coup; it was certainly a far cry from the mannequin in Selfridge’s window.
Miss Size led them over to the administrative block and up a stone staircase to the first floor. ‘We’ll talk in my sitting room, Inspector,’ she said. ‘If we stay in my office, we’ll be interrupted every two minutes. Miss Tey—I hope you’ll find your tour interesting and please feel free to ask Cicely anything at all. We’ll see you in about three quarters of an hour.’
She disappeared with Archie, and Josephine noticed how efficiently the two visits had been managed to ensure him the discretion he needed without offending her. Left alone with Miss McCall, she felt a little uncomfortable: normally, she was too lazy or too shy to go this far in the name of research, and the bravado of her prison visit had much to do with resisting Celia Bannerman’s dismissal of her work as popular entertainment. She had no idea why she was suddenly so concerned about authenticity—to be entertaining and popular had always been enough for her in the past—but she was honest enough to admit that there was a more personal reason for coming to Holloway which had nothing to do with proving anything to her former teacher. Bracing herself, she smiled over-confidently at her guide and walked through the glass door which was held open for her, feeling a little like Dante following Virgil.
Holloway had been built on the radiating principle, with four glass-roofed wings diverging from one centre like the spokes of a wheel. From where Josephine stood on the first floor, she could look down to the cells on the ground floor and up to the two galleries overhead, and her first impression was unexpectedly one of light. The afternoon sun was hazy but valiant in its efforts, and it shone through the glass on to fresh white paintwork, providing a refreshing contrast to the darkness of the office corridors.
‘It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it?’ the prison officer said, noticing her expression. ‘Apparently, the first thing Miss Size did when she got here was change the colour. This all used to be orange and brown—can you imagine how drab and depressing that must have been?’
‘How long have you been here?’ Josephine asked as they walked further into the main building.
‘Only a couple of years. I first came here as a social worker back in ’32 bec
ause I was interested in prison conditions for women, but, when I saw what they were trying to do, it seemed sensible to help from the inside. What would you like to see first?’
‘Oh, I don’t mind—I’ll be led by you.’
‘Right, then—we may as well start with the cells.’
On the way to one of the wings they passed a table full of flowers, some exotic and obviously expensive, others which looked as if they had been picked from the garden rather than ordered from a florist. Each pot or vase held a piece of paper with its owner’s name and number, and Josephine exclaimed in surprise at the brightness of the display. ‘Somehow I didn’t expect to see flowers in Holloway,’ she said.
‘Well, they’re not allowed in the cells so we keep them here. That way, prisoners can look at what they’ve been sent four times a day as they pass through to work or to exercise, and it’s nice for those who never receive anything of their own. We put some in the chapel, too, but you have to be careful.’ She grinned. ‘Tulips are particularly good for hiding make-up.’ Josephine was struck by the combination of cheeriness and practicality, and wondered—should she find herself on the receiving end of it—whether she would find it reassuring or irritating. ‘This is the first offenders’ wing,’ Cicely continued, unlocking another glass door at the head of yet another corridor. ‘You’ll notice they’re wearing green checked overalls instead of blue.’ It seemed to Josephine a negligible distinction: the women she had seen so far had all had their individuality knocked out of them by shapeless dark dresses, a charwoman’s overall, black shoes and thick, black woollen stockings; some stood at the doors to their cells, others were fetching water from a tap on the landing or queuing by a lavatory recess, but all seemed to wear an expression of resignation which suggested that the experience of prison was much the same whether your uniform was finished with blue or with green. ‘Most of the women eat in their cells, but there’s a dining area downstairs where those who’ve earned enough good conduct marks can eat together and talk or read a paper,’ she added. ‘It sounds grand, but it’s actually a cheerless strip of landing between two rows of cells and, if I’m honest, most of the women in here have no interest whatsoever in the Daily Telegraph’s view of the world. Still, it keeps them in touch with things, but we’ve a long way to go before we catch up with the men.’
‘Are men’s prisons very different, then?’ Josephine asked, relieved to find that Cicely McCall’s view on prison reform was not as rose-coloured as it had at first seemed.
‘Good God, yes. At Wakefield, they eat together, unsupervised, and they don’t all look like they’ve just stepped out of the workhouse. I suppose it’s because there are so many more male prisoners than female—they’re a bigger problem, so they get more attention from those who make the decisions. But it would be nice if more people on the outside recognised that women aren’t somehow less affected than men by this sort of demoralisation.’ She stopped outside an open door at the very end of the wing. ‘Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox and show you the cell.’
Josephine walked in, and realised too late that it had been ridiculous of her to expect the room to be empty. A woman of about thirty stood in front of a mirror. She reddened when she saw a stranger, and Josephine felt the heat of the blush reflected in her own face; it was hard to say who was more embarrassed. ‘This is Miss Tey, Browning,’ Cicely explained. ‘Miss Size has sent her round to have a look at us.’
‘What a lovely bright … er … room,’ Josephine said and could have bitten her tongue out for sounding so preposterous, but Browning seemed genuinely pleased.
‘Isn’t it?’ she said, then noticed Josephine looking at the photographs on the walls. ‘That’s my husband,’ she explained, pointing to a picture of a good-looking young man in a postman’s uniform, ‘and this—this is my Bobby, but I expect he looks so different already. They grow so fast at that age, don’t they?’
There were tears in her eyes when she spoke of the baby. ‘Will you be away from them long?’ Josephine asked gently.
‘Another six months, Miss.’
‘That must be very hard.’
‘Yes, Miss—it’ll be half his life.’
‘He looks like you, though,’ she said, stepping closer to the picture. ‘Six months won’t change that.’ They left Browning to her enforced privacy and walked back down the corridor. As they neared the hub of the prison, Josephine noticed how much darker the cells became due to the close proximity of the other wings; obviously Cicely’s scepticism did not entirely overcome the natural desire to make a good impression on a visitor. ‘Have the cells changed much in the last thirty years?’ she asked, remembering for a moment why she was supposed to be there.
‘It’s only in the last few months that photographs and a looking glass have been allowed, and the beds are different—they have proper springs these days, rather than old wooden planks. There’s an electric light now, and it’s lights out at ten to give them a chance to read or write letters. Oh, and there’s a bell in case they need anything in an emergency. Sometimes it even works.’
‘And the women on this landing—what are they in here for?’
‘All sorts.’ She pointed to each cell in turn. ‘Williams was too heavy-handed with her foster child, Pears and Gregory are both shoplifters, like Browning, and Gaskell is the daughter of an admiral who somehow forgot to pay her bill every time she left a hotel. Over here, we’ve got a bigamist, a prostitute and a widow who lost her job and tried to steal two tins of fruit from Woolworth’s.’
‘So the only thing they have in common is being a first offender?’
‘That’s right. The only first-timers who go elsewhere are brothel keepers.’ Josephine raised an eyebrow. ‘For some reason, they get the heaviest sentences, they’re treated like lepers and are not usually favoured by the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society—they never get any money when they’re released. We reckon it’s because the ladies on the committee fear for their husbands’ moral welfare.’
‘But the others are all treated the same, no matter what they’ve done?’
‘Yes. All classes, all crimes, all ages—they get the same routine and the same treatment, no matter how long their sentence.’
To Josephine, it seemed anathema to reform that women should be herded together with so little understanding of their backgrounds or needs, and she said so. ‘Or is that just naive of me?’
‘Not at all—you’re absolutely right, but we’re battling for twentieth-century changes in a Victorian building, and even Miss Size can only do so much with the shell she’s given. If she had her way, they’d knock the whole place down and start again with something more workable, but she’s shot herself in the foot by achieving as much as she has. The Home Office sees that she’s making life bearable in the existing prison, so we drop a long way down the Treasury’s priority list.’
Bearable was a subjective term, Josephine thought, but she said nothing. ‘Is anything done for their families while they’re in here?’ she asked, remembering the young woman’s face as she had looked at the picture of her child.
‘There’s a group of voluntary visitors who look after families as well.’ Josephine’s reservations must have been obvious, because Cicely said: ‘I know what you mean and, by and large, they’re made up of the great and the good, but it’s nothing like the old lady visitors system; they were all terribly earnest and devoted to a woman’s spiritual welfare, but they had no idea how to deal with what they found here. No, these volunteers are more practical—they give money so that women can get their husbands’ tools out of hock or pay their rent arrears, things that keep the family going and give the prisoner a fighting chance of not ending up back in here a week after she’s released. And some of the friendships that are made last well beyond the end of a sentence.’ Josephine could not help but reflect on how different it sounded from Celia’s guarded comments about her own time in the prison service, when any such fraternisation would have been frowned upon. ‘I know I joked about t
he brothel keepers,’ Cicely added, ‘but the Aid Society is a remarkable organisation. It’s raised nearly twenty thousand pounds since it started.’
The sewing rooms and laundry were housed in separate buildings, and Josephine was glad to leave the oppressive smell of grease and sweat and general dirt behind for a while as they walked across the yard. ‘I might as well show you the workrooms,’ her guide said, ‘but don’t forget that all the work would have been done in individual cells during the period you’re writing about.’
‘So didn’t the prisoners associate with each other?’ Josephine asked, surprised. In her mind, she had created an image of Sach and Walters glaring at each other across the exercise yard as they awaited trial, or Sach and other baby farmers like Eleanor Vale talking at meal times and finding comfort in their shared fate.
Cicely smiled. ‘I can only tell you what it’s like now. Inside each cell, there’s a card of prison rules and any woman who can be bothered to read it will find that no talking is allowed at any time.’ She nodded as Josephine opened her mouth to argue. ‘I know, I know—you’ve only been here half an hour and already you can see that’s nonsense. They talk while they’re standing at the doors to their cells, and while they’re waiting to go to chapel. Most of the gossip happens mornings and evenings while they’re queuing to empty their slops or waiting for the luxury of the lavatory. You’re not telling me that fifty women on a landing with one hot tap and four toilets aren’t going to talk to each other, even if it’s only to suggest politely that the woman in front might like to get a move on. Then there’s the exercise yard—I could show you a dozen old lags who can carry on a conversation with the woman in front without moving their lips or turning their heads. Excellent ventriloquists they’d make in another life.’ She laughed. ‘I’m not saying it’s non-stop chatter from dawn until dusk, but they do speak—and I assume it was the same back then.’