by Ajay Close
‘They opened the door to another world.’
Such a queer, wistful note in his voice.
She looks up from the filthy nest of her matted hair. He has cut himself shaving, a tiny nick under his right ear. Neat ears, for a man. Yesterday, when he turned in front of the window, the sun shone clean through the pink cartilage.
He says quietly, ‘If you wished to write to her . . .’
Her face lights up.
‘. . . I can’t permit you to set pen to paper, but I could write a short note at your dictation.’
Why would it be this easy?
‘You think she’ll succeed where you have not, in getting me to eat.’
His face closes. ‘As you wish.’ He removes the thermometer, noting the temperature on his chart.
‘I didn’t say I didn’t want to.’ The words stick in her throat but she forces them out, ‘It would be good of you.’
He has paper in his leather bag. Brought specially for this, or always carried with him? Don’t ask. No more barbs. Not until he’s posted the letter.
‘So,’ he says. ‘Dear Muriel.’
‘My dear Muriel.’
My dear Muriel, I know how anxious you must be without news of me, your imagination running riot . . .
His look says she is trying his patience. ‘Stick to practical matters.’
But even practical matters are subject to censorship. He will allow no reference to the feeding. She wants Muriel to make arrangements for when she gets out of gaol, some sympathiser’s house where she can convalesce. Her appearance will be too shockingly altered for her to go home. This sentence, too, he refuses. He lets her give details of how she came to be arrested, then a message to her mother, begging her not to worry too much. Talking to her sister, her voice softens, her carapace dissolving in the pity she will only accept from this one source. Oh Muriel. For a minute or so he writes at her dictation, the nib’s scratch across the paper following her voice, his breathing audible with the effort of keeping up. She slows down for him. Such a strange feeling, the two of them cooperating like this. She wants a solicitor to challenge the legality of the feeding.
He has lost his temper several times over the past few days, but she still can’t predict when he will snap.
‘The letter is long enough.’
‘It’s hardly begun.’
‘Don’t overtax the Governor’s goodwill. Or mine.’
Scolded like a naughty child. Was this his plan all along, this new way of making her feel small? Let it be a lesson, she thinks. No more truces.
The letter must be signed off. He suggests yours sincerely. She snorts. She is not writing to her bank agent. She wants with love to all, which he accepts, followed by yours ever the same. His eyes narrow. What does that mean? Exactly what it says: her affections are constant. It is how she always ends her letters, omitting it would strike her sister as most peculiar. Which is true, as far as it goes, but he’s right to be suspicious. The phrase alludes to her commitment to the cause. Grudgingly, he transcribes it.
She notices the way he is bent over the paper. She is lying on her side to read the words as he writes. Their heads are almost touching.
The wardress comes back with the mercurous chloride. A laxative. To be added to her next feed.
A man and a woman conversing daily, mistrustful at first, but with increasing familiarity as the weeks pass. Anyone can see where this is leading.
And when the man has complete knowledge of the woman’s body, complete freedom to touch her mouth, breasts, genitals, anus? When he subjects her urine to chemical analysis, and forces her jaws apart with a metal gag. Where does that lead?
She hears the footsteps first. Two doctors, six wardresses. Up the stairs and along the passage. Every morning and evening, and still her heart lurches. She turns face-down on the thin mattress, clinging to the bed-rail, squeezing her eyes shut. Later she will wonder if she might have shamed him by looking him in the face, but when it matters she is powerless. Calloused fingers loosen her grip, their nails dig into her flesh, prising her hands from the rail. They turn her onto her back and pin her with their weight, their lousy bodies, their suffocating stink. She opens her eyes and there is Doctor Lindsay with his smirk to remind her how her nightgown gapes in the struggle. How the fabric, soaked by spilled liquid, clings to her form. But she will not acknowledge this because her task is to resist, and if she thought about the violation she would die of shame.
And then she sees Doctor Watson in his butcher’s overall, greasing the rubber tube, and all rational thought flies from her head. He forces the gag between her teeth. She bites down on it, pitting tooth enamel against tempered steel. It prises her jaws so wide she fears the bone will snap. His fingers press on her tongue. He pushes the tube down her throat, grazing the sides. She retches and chokes, but still he pays it in, inch after inch, until it finds her stomach and she spasms. He pours the liquid down the tube. More and more of it − too much! − her stomach convulsing to expel it, so it burns a path down her nose. Quick fingers pinch her nostrils. Doctor Lindsay yanks out the gag and clamps his hand over her mouth.
‘Swallow.’
Swallow her own vomit, he means. But there are things the body will not do, instincts stronger than the will, even the will to life itself. She cannot swallow. And she cannot breathe. Panic beats its wings inside her chest. And then the man I will marry in two years’ time says ‘We will let you breathe when we see you going purple’. Her lungs are bursting. She knows she will die. And finally she looks into his eyes and
Oh God, I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
SEVEN
Muriel never receives the letter. The Governor says a note in an unfamiliar hand would only inflame the family’s fears, making them think Prisoner Scott too ill to write herself. The sister is troublesome enough as it is. Some damn fool let her into the Commission in Edinburgh the other day. She got into the Chairman’s office. They’re all writing to the gaol, the sister, the mother, that woman he fed in Edinburgh. She begs the Governor to be present at every feeding, to satisfy himself that it is done with the least possible cruelty. The words are underlined. What does Doctor Watson make of that?
The doctor says it’s obvious. Lacking the grounds to make a formal complaint, she is trying to smear him by innuendo. Fortunately he enjoys the Commissioners’ complete confidence. A sore point for the Governor. It is his gaol, the chain of command runs through him, he receives the Medical Officer’s daily reports and forwards them to his superiors, but for all this, the doctor’s presence undermines him. Twice their differences of opinion have gone all the way to Edinburgh. On both occasions word came back: Doctor Ferguson Watson must use his discretion. The Governor has given thirty years of his life to the Prison Commission, Doctor Watson has not yet one year’s service. Who wouldn’t suspect deals in back rooms stitched up over a dram and a sixpenny cigar? And yet the doctor’s a nobody. You only have to look at him to smell the manure on his boots. Amazing how far he has got on a few Latin words, a university degree, and a grand opinion of himself.
Yesterday, the Governor learned that Doctor Lindsay had taken a day’s leave: Doctor Watson did not require his presence. It is not Doctor Watson’s place to decide when a member of the prison staff can take a holiday. The fellow needs taking down a peg or two. The Governor can’t get a day’s peace without Matron knocking on his door, chewing his ear off. Himself has doubled the amount of dirty laundry coming out of the prison hospital. Himself has hand-picked a team of wardresses to assist him. Himself draws up the rota, to make sure none of the other staff get in. When Matron catches them coming off shift and asks them to report, they tell her the doctor has forbidden it. To her face, they say it! Is she the Matron of this gaol or not? The Governor has some sympathy, but what can he do? And there’s a useful side to the Medical Officer setting up his own wee fiefdom. When it all goes to hell in a handcart, it won’t be the Governor’s fault.
Those suffrage wome
n are out on the High Street every night, ranting and singing their damned hymns. The King and Queen are due in town next month to open the new infirmary. The Provost calls him in, wagging his finger about not wanting trouble. To cap it all, they’ve arrested another one in Rutherglen, trying to burn down somebody’s fine house. She’ll be arriving on the six o’clock train from Glasgow.
Frances Gordon is four feet ten, a mouth-breather, sallow-skinned, small-eyed, pug-nosed. One of the moral purity brigade, destined to provoke variations on the same drawling put-down wherever she goes. Don’t worry, hen, you’re safe with me. She’s no better at fire-raising than Arabella, but brave. Without that freakishly small nose, she could have stood the feeding. Made as she is, if you block her throat with a tube, she stops breathing.
The Doctor thinks she’s acting. She is put in a cell. He doesn’t want her anywhere near Prisoner Scott, the two of them giving each other the vapours. The Prison Commission needs a photograph. Half these women use aliases. Without a picture, it’s impossible to keep track of them once they get out. But this one’s full of tricks, screws up her face like a monkey the instant she spots the camera. He wants to give her chloroform, have Lindsay take the picture while she’s out cold, but the Commissioners won’t hear of it. Terrified of opening their morning paper to find that Prisoner Gordon is actually Lady something-or-other, a great friend of the King.
Whoever she is, she’s no lady. They never had much to do with quality, down in the doctor’s corner of rural Ayrshire, but he’d expect something more in the way of complexion and height, more like Prisoner Scott. If you’re heir to half a county, why would you breed with a yellow-skinned dwarf? There’s something about the woman, her ugliness, her English whine, her odd peppery smell of autumnal woods, and her evident horror of him, that scratches at his nerves. If she’s going to resist: fine, resist. But this endless caterwauling . . . Aye, he shouts at her. It’s the only way to make himself heard. If the wardresses don’t like it, too bad. But next morning he has thought it over. He speaks in the tone he used on the farm, seeing a cow through its first calving. That’s how he must think of her: a creature blundering against its own animal nature. In the days to come she will plead with him, her voice sticky on his skin, assuring him she is trying to co-operate; if the feed comes back up, she can’t help it. Those mouse’s eyes battened on his face. He’d almost rather have the screaming.
At least Prisoner Scott is healthy, he can count on her sound constitution. This one is a runt. God knows how she’s made it to forty-five. He feeds her three times a day and she vomits back every fluid ounce. She’s getting weaker, not stronger. Severely dehydrated, her lips crusted with dried saliva, her breath hellish. She asks if she can swill her mouth out with water and he braves the stench to bring his head down to hers and whisper ‘Drink some, drink some – no one will know.’ You’d think he’d stabbed her. The wailing turns into a fit of hysterics, then she’s gasping, hyperventilating, one hand clutching her heart. ‘For God’s sake, woman, get a grip on yourself.’ The wardresses look at him like he’s the Devil. The fat one with the goitre raises her voice to him. ‘She cannae breathe with that thing in her mooth.’ Rank insubordination. If Prisoner Gordon is too far gone to exploit it, he can be sure Prisoner Scott will sniff it out. But he’ll not lower himself to win over the wardresses. If it’s a choice between ruling by love or fear, he’ll take fear.
It has been at the back of his mind ever since he fed the Moorhead woman in Calton Gaol, a solution to the physiological difficulties. Sugars, amino acids and salt can be absorbed in the lower digestive tract without the enzymes secreted in the stomach, and the humiliation might prove helpful. It’s not a queasiness he shares, the rectum is just another bodily part, no need for all this shame, but if others are fool enough to feel it then he’ll turn it to use. In Peterhead there were hardened criminals he reduced to lambs with a single enema.
The wardresses pretend not to understand. Or perhaps they are so stupid they really can’t see it. He spells it out: an Enule, otherwise known as a suppository, with enough prisoner’s laudanum to relax the bowel. He resists the urge to slap that smirk off Lindsay’s face. For a few moments the wardresses could go either way. If the fat one refuses, the other two will follow suit. He asks if they want the prisoner’s death on their conscience? She won’t eat, the feeding tube doesn’t work: do they have a better solution? Look at her: skin and bone. She won’t last the week unless they do something. Lindsay turns it, repaying the withheld slap. His silly grin reminds them of their wee brothers. They like to tease him about the sweetheart they know he doesn’t have. The lad’s a fool to let them take liberties, but that’s his own affair. When he grips the patient’s shoulders they move into position. On the count of three they turn her. Prisoner Gordon is screaming like a banshee. It would take so little force to stop her noise. He startles himself with this thought. Not that he’d do it. It’s just the infernal racket getting to him. Lindsay parts her yellow buttocks, revealing the brown pucker of her anus and, below, the mouse’s fur around her sex.
She is fed in this way thirteen times, over four days. Throughout, she suffers from extreme nervous prostration. The wardresses can’t stand it. He allows them to administer the laudanum. It’s the only thing that gives them any peace at all.
EIGHT
Arabella has found a new insult to vex Doctor Savage. He is her gaoler, plain and simple. His job is to keep her behind bars. She does not believe he is a doctor at all. What proper doctor would practise in a prison? She’ll grant he’s familiar with the basics, he can use a stethoscope and thermometer. Who couldn’t, after ten minutes’ instruction? Incensed by this goading, he reels off his qualifications. It takes some time to list them all. She has to bite her cheek to stop herself from smiling.
‘All that studying,’ she says, ‘just to torture poor wretches in prison.’
He tells her he studied to heal the sick, and to understand those whose sickness is mental.
‘If you mean me, you’ve still some way to go.’
‘Oh I understand you well enough—’
She raises an eyebrow.
‘—a neurotic hunger for attention. A classroom of children is not enough: you want the Prime Minister and all his cabinet hanging on your words.’
With anyone else I would call this a game. A ritual trading of insults. I’ve known married couples who did it all the time, loving married couples. But the doctor is not the playful type.
She tells him the Prime Minister and all his cabinet could ignore her forever if they gave her the vote.
That derisive push of breath down his nose. ‘Twenty years ago it was the right to study medicine. Now it’s the vote. Once you have that, it’ll be the right to minister a parish, or kill for your country. And you’ll get those too, in the end, and none will satisfy you.’
On balance, she is rather delighted by this speech. So what would satisfy her, in his opinion?
‘A husband.’
She laughs. ‘Oh Doctor Savage, I had thought you would do better than that.’
‘Nature seeks a balance. Masculine and feminine, virility and tenderness, brain and womb. Your body, a woman’s body, is a part of Nature. Denied the balance of wedlock and motherhood, it must remain unfulfilled.’
‘And what about you?’ she asks softly.
‘We are not discussing . . .’
She cuts him off. ‘You are not married, I think. What of your fulfilment?’
He wants to talk seriously, without this persiflage, so he answers her question. ‘I do what is needful.’
The mirth dies on her lips. If he is not referring to consorting with prostitutes, and already she knows him well enough to rule this out, then he must mean masturbation. She can say the word in her head thanks to Grace, who has a doctor’s forthrightness about such matters. Grace says all men do it before they are married, all the cold water in the Firth of Forth couldn’t stop them. They suffer needless guilt and worry about it sapping their vi
tal energies. The whole subject ought to be dragged into the open. Arabella is sure Grace is right, but still, she is embarrassed.
He sees this and flushes, ‘Potassium Bromide.’
‘Ah,’ she says faintly.
And now he’s furious. Did she think he meant vice? If she’d witnessed what he’s seen in his career, she wouldn’t have made that mistake. He presumes she has heard of the Wassermann reaction? (She hasn’t.) A test for syphilis. He had a hand in developing it, under Professor Browning. A blood sample is drawn, serum extracted, a simple compound added. Agitate the test tube and you have your diagnosis. People with no symptoms who might not find out for years: now they can be told ‘you are infected’.
‘And they can be cured?’
‘Some of them.’ Without meaning to, she has taken the wind out of his sails. But he rallies. ‘They can be prevented from breeding. We have a tool that could revolutionise public health policy.’
She wouldn’t have called him an eloquent man, but on this subject he’s unstoppable. His paper on unusual fertility in syphilitic patients was published last year. Locking up infected prostitutes is not enough. Every child born to foreigners here must be tested, the wandering of gypsies controlled. The tin cooking utensils they make and sell are a carrier of infection. Their habit of begging food from farmers compounds the danger.
She is sceptical. Just because rural people are poor, it doesn’t mean they’re unhygienic. He says he knows what he is talking about. He grew up on a farm. But surely, she says, his own family would not eat from unwashed dishes? He meets her look. She falters. He tells her he has worked in asylums in Glasgow, Lenzie, Paisley. In each place, the same story: one in seven lunatics tested positive. The politicians are fully aware of the scale of the problem: more destructive to the nation’s health than tuberculosis or alcohol. But they would rather bury their heads in the sand and see innocent lives blighted, to spare their manly blushes. It is a scourge. A plague. It will not just go away.