Crooked Pieces

by Sarah Grazebrook

  ‘’Scuse me, Gov, Miss… Do you think you could kill each other on someone else’s platform? Only I’ve got another four of these to shift and the train leaves in ten minutes.’

  Fred is so hopeless. Whenever he is trying to look all cross and serious something always makes him laugh. Once he started I could not hold off long, although I did not like him talking about Miss Christabel like that. It is almost as though he was jealous.

  We went to our tearoom. Where we had gone that first Sunday, after the gallery. Fred does not order anything now without asking me. I said I would like a slice of chocolate sponge. He had some too.

  ‘I have a piece of news for you, Maggie.’ His face told nothing so I knew not, good or bad. ‘I have been offered promotion.’

  ‘Promotion to what?’

  ‘Sergeant. I was waiting to hear when you went away.’

  ‘Is that why you were…?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Well, that is wonderful.’

  ‘There is money in it. A hundred a year if I stay in London.’

  ‘And if you do not?’ I was still hankering for our cottage in Wood Green.

  ‘Seventy-five. But it is enough, is it not?’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  He smiled at me and I came over mushier than in the Manchester hall. ‘Enough for two to live on?’

  I flung my arms round him. ‘It will be near twice that, Fred, for I have fifty now, less what I send my Pa.’

  He was quiet for a moment then reached for my hands. ‘Maggie, if I am a sergeant, you cannot go on as you are.’

  I stared at him. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because while I am a constable I can avoid it. If I am made up, I cannot.’

  ‘You mean you would take us in charge?’

  ‘I’d have no choice.’

  I love Fred. I love every hair of his head, every breath of his body, but I slapped him. So hard I think he wondered if day was day and night was night.

  He rubbed his poor cheek. ‘Not sergeant, then?’ was all he said.

  I am on the list of speakers! At our monthly meeting several of the committee remarked upon my visit to Manchester. Miss Sylvia said it was a double triumph, for northern women were famously hard to impress. That much I certainly could vouch for.

  Miss Christabel, too, was very generous in her praise, and said she had always known I had what it took. Her saying so meant more to me than a whole book of compliments from anyone else.

  This past six weeks I have visited fourteen towns! I have spoken to labourers, countrymen, seamstresses, coal miners and, once, a party of Americans who were on a tour and thought they had tickets for the music hall! Well, we gave them a good show and I think they went home happy. Especially when we all sang ‘Rise up, women, for the fight is hard and long’ to ‘John Brown’s Body’ at the end. They clapped and stamped and put more money in the collecting plates than we had got in the whole of the week before. Miss Davison said it was because they were too dumb to understand our coins, but I think it was because they were good, true people. I heard one say, ‘No American would stand to see his womenfolk so treated.’ For a new sort of people they are a sight more civilised than the British.

  This election will be like no other. Poor Mr Churchill has spent so much on guards to save him from a bag or two of flour that he can scarce afford the cost of holding a meeting, and when he does, ten to one, one of us will get in and ruin it for him. I have heard of late he has taken to raising his hat to our ladies when they meet. The newspapers say he and the Lloyd George are half persuaded to support us, for they see that we shall win in the end and, I suppose, fear to be on the wrong side when victory comes!

  Mr Bernard Shaw has written to The Times a most brilliant letter. He told how the Gladstone has said our torture is not torture but a perfectly decent way to be fed and that no one suffers from it in the least. He has therefore invited the Gladstone to the most splendid banquet that ever was, only insisting that, with a cinematograph machine hard by to picture it, the cruel beast shall take each morsel through his nostrils.

  Fred says a lot of his colleagues will not arrest the women any more for fear they will be force-fed in the prisons. They think it is quite wrong and not in keeping with the law, though they cannot say as much. ‘Why can they not say as much? It is surely their duty to uphold the law?’ I quizzed him.

  ‘Yes, it is, but it is the judges send the women to prison, not the police. It is not within our power to say what happens inside a jail.’

  ‘So it is enough to turn your backs and pretend it is not happening?’

  He stood stock-still in the middle of the pavement and swung me round to face him. ‘Maggie, that is not true. You know full well I have never denied how wicked I think this force-feeding. Never once.’

  ‘No, but you do nothing to halt it.’

  ‘What would you have me do? Shoot the Prime Minister? I am a constable. That is all. I cannot say to the judges, “Stop sending these women to prison. I do not think it right”.’

  ‘Why not? Other people do.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lots of people. Famous people. Mr Bernard Shaw, Mr Keir Hardie.’

  ‘Yes, and how much difference has it made? If the Government will not listen to them, do you truly think they will pay any heed to Fred Thorpe, Junior Constable, Marylebone High Street?’

  I felt something snap that the man I loved, of all people, should be so feeble.

  ‘You’ll never know, Fred, for you are afraid to try.’ With that I marched off down the street quicker than I ever walked before. He did not follow me.

  The next day came a long brown envelope addressed to me at the office. Inside was a cutting from the Letters Page of The Times:

  Sir,

  As a junior ranking constable with the Central London Police, I wish to state my unreserved detestation of the cruel and inhuman practice of force-feeding, presently being visited upon women prisoners for their part in the fight for Women’s Enfranchisement. Whatever the rights and wrongs of their cause they should be entitled to fair and Christian treatment at all times even, or perhaps particularly, within the walls of our penal institutions. I speak only for myself in this when I say that when I swore my Oath of Allegiance to the Crown, I little thought I should be upholding the rule of torture.

  I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

  Frederick Thorpe.

  I showed it to Miss Kerr and Miss Lake. They were strong in their praise for Fred’s courage. I asked if I might pin it on the notice-board and was just doing so when Miss Christabel swept in. ‘What’s this, Maggie? Have you been writing to the papers?’

  ‘Not me, miss. My…’

  She peered past me. ‘Well, that is very good news, Maggie. My congratulations to your young man. He is obviously someone of principle and good sense. What a pity he is not a little higher up the ranks, then think what currency we could make of it. Still it’s a very good start. You must be very proud of him.’

  ‘I am, miss,’ I said, thinking I would be if I could be sure he would ever speak to me again.

  I need not have worried. When I left the office that evening he was waiting for me just as though nothing had happened. I ran to him.

  ‘Fred, you must forgive me. I never meant… I am so proud.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Your beautiful letter. It is wonderful. Quite the best ever written.’

  ‘I couldn’t be sure of that.’

  ‘Yes it is. I have shown it to Miss Christabel. She thinks so, too, and if she does, it must be so. It is on the board for everyone to see.’

  Fred looked a bit rueful. ‘It’s on the board at the police station, too, but I don’t think my colleagues feel quite the same about it. In fact I know they don’t.’

  ‘Why not? They should. They are probably just jealous. Wish they had written it themselves.’ This made him laugh a good deal, but not in a very cheerful way.

  Miss Davison is happier than the day s
he was born. She has excelled herself by getting shut in a cell with two beds and shoving them against the door so the brutes could not enter. Well, clearly they do not need to be inside a cell to do their work, for they went out into the prison yard and turned an ice-cold hosepipe on her through the bars till she was all but drowned.

  Miss Christabel has taken down Fred’s letter and covered the board in clippings about the affair. It made for grand pictures in the papers and Miss Davison, of course, is full of how she will do it again and again if ever she gets the chance. All I hope is Miss Christabel will not decide we are all to copy her, for it seems to me some of these ladies are in a contest for who can harm themselves the most.

  Does Miss Christabel read my mind? Organisers’ meeting. ‘Miss Davison has set an example we should all be proud to follow’, looking straight at me, or so it felt. I stared at my hands. ‘It does seem to me that we must continually be looking for new ways to attack the Government. The public is fickle, remember, and easily bored. There is no point in our expecting the press to keep publishing the same old stories. Yes, meetings. Yes, processions. Yes, hunger strikes. But we need more. More. More. We need to keep our faces constantly before them, be it through protests, petitions, disruption.’ She lowered her voice. ‘My dear sisters, I know how some of you have suffered, are suffering for the Cause… My heart goes out to each and every one of you. Believe me, when you weep, I weep. When you cry out in pain, I cry out with you. When you are slapped and beaten, I, too, am bruised. But do not let it be in vain. Do not let it be for nothing.

  ‘Take the example of these courageous souls and make it your own. Miss Davison endured saturation with freezing water. Lady Con has been arrested four times in the past year, yet bravely returns to the fray. Mrs Brailsford has personally put herself at risk of arrest on several occasions, with all its consequences for her husband’s position. Do not leave it to those who perhaps have a better claim to privilege than some of you, to show you the true path to nobility.’

  We sat there, watched by this woman whose shoelaces we were not fit to tie, each feeling…what? Guilt? Determination? Inspiration? I know what I felt as I forced my arm into the air. Dread.

  ‘Yes, Maggie?’

  I stood up. My hands were shaking and my voice as well, but I knew if I did not speak, my thoughts would turn in on me and I should lose my mind.

  ‘I just want to say that I admire very much the ladies you speak of who work so hard for the Cause and put themselves and, I suppose, their reputations at risk in doing so.’

  ‘Indeed they do.’

  ‘I do not run that risk, I know, for my name means nothing to the rich and those who care about these things.’

  ‘You can still do your bit, Maggie. You need not fear on that count.’

  ‘But I do fear, Miss. I fear because, though Lady Con may be arrested and sent to prison a dozen times, a hundred times, she will not go through what I and the likes of me must. You tell us, Miss Christabel, how brave these ladies are and how we should try to copy them in every way. Well, let them copy us, too. Let them be put a month in the third division and be kicked and dragged by their hair and hurled from one side of their cell to the other. Not sit with the matron reading newspapers and discussing what flowers to sow along the hospital borders till they’re let out three days later with ‘nerves’ and ‘flutters’ and the like.’

  There was a silence. Nobody looked at me. Nobody except Miss Christabel who, for the first time ever in my experience, seemed completely lost for words. Not for long. With a little shrug of her shoulders she collected up her papers and tucked them into a folder. ‘Does anyone have anything else they want to bring up, because if not, I’d like to close the meeting. I’m due in Rochester at seven this evening and I need to pop into the printers on the way.’

  End of meeting.

  Everyone scurried off. I was to turn off the lights and lock up so at least I could shut myself away till they had all gone. When I thought it was safe I came out.

  ‘Maggie.’

  I fairly leapt. Lady Con was still sitting there. She looked at me with her grave blue eyes and I felt worse than if I had kicked her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I should never have…’

  ‘Yes, you should. If we cannot open our hearts to each other, what hope have we got of convincing anyone else?’

  ‘I never meant… It wasn’t against you, Lady Con… It’s just that sometimes I feel as though everything I do is counted useless. Not good enough. I do try. But Miss Christabel’s right. I am not a lady. I have none of the courage and bravery that goes with being one. I am not made like that. The best I can do is try to bear what comes to me. I cannot go seeking for worse. I simply cannot.’

  ‘I understand that, Maggie. I do not know that I could dare do one half of what I do if I truly believed I should be tortured as you have been. I tell myself it is not the case, but in my heart I know that my name protects me, and always will. So don’t ever tell yourself that a “Lady” is a finer person than a woman without a title. We have all your weaknesses and fears. More, probably, for we have never been truly tested, nor will be while rank is valued above merit in a human being.’

  We went our ways. I thought, if life had turned out differently that lady and I might have been friends, for we understand each other. I have never felt that with any of the others, except Miss Sylvia and Miss Annie. Miss Annie because she is working class, and Miss Sylvia because…I don’t know. It is as though in amongst all these fine noble people she feels my loneliness, how outside I am of everything, and sometimes I think she shares that feeling. I can make the right noises and do (occasionally) the right things, but I am like a creature from the circus. They can dress me up and teach me a thousand tricks, still in the end I will be only what they have made of me, nothing more. The real me does not matter to them. Perhaps it is just as well.

  Miss Sylvia came to the office this evening. I was alone, marking up the new calendar. I had not seen her for weeks. She looked drawn and wretched, but so do we all with the election coming up and so much to be done.

  There was some cake left over from Christmas so I fetched her a piece, saying, ‘Well, now it is my turn to feed you up, just as you did me back at Park Walk.’ I thought it would make her smile. To my horror, she lowered her head into her hands and started to sob – not really making any noise, just sort of gulps.

  I flew to her. ‘Miss Sylvia, what is it? What has happened? Is your mother arrested?’

  ‘No,’ she was rubbing her eyes with her sleeve like she used to in the studio. ‘Harry. My brother, my dearest brother… Oh, Harry…’

  ‘Is he worse? I am sure he will soon be cured. Quite sure of it. Your mother has found him the very best doctors, has she not?’

  Miss Sylvia raised her great dark eyes and stared ahead of her. ‘Oh yes. The very best. Always the best. Always too late.’

  Word came that no one was to speak to the family about their loss. We were to behave as normal in their presence. Indeed they bore their pain so bravely a stranger would not have guessed they were in mourning. Miss Christabel worked as I had done after Ma died. Speaking, writing, organising, tearing up and down the country to rallies. Never quiet, never still.

  I noticed that she would not travel by train if she could help it. One day I booked tickets for her all the way to Liverpool and she almost threw them back at me.

  ‘Maggie, how many times must you be told? Vera will drive me. That is all there is to it.’

  Miss Kerr came over to me afterwards. ‘You must not take it to heart, Maggie. You were not to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  She sighed. ‘Miss Christabel was on a train when she learnt of her father’s death. I think, what with Harry…’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Kerr. No one told me.’

  ‘Well, no, why should they have? Yes, it must have been terrible. To see it like that. On the back of a stranger’s newspaper. She and her mother were on their way home to hi
m. But they were too late.’ I understood then the meaning of Miss Sylvia’s words.

  I have always been afraid of Mrs Pankhurst. Not because she has ever been anything but kind and generous to me, but simply because she seemed to me to be so far beyond anything I could approach or reach for in this life. She was like a sort of goddess – calm, wise, noble, gracious, elegant beyond my dreams. Not like any other person in this world.

  Yesterday I was sent round to a hall with some leaflets that were needed for the meeting. Not finding anyone out the front I made my way to the room behind the stage where speakers wait. At first I thought it empty, but then I saw someone huddled in the corner, arms drooping, head lolling against the wall like a broken marionette. It was Mrs Pankhurst.

  She looked up as I entered, then pulled herself to her feet and came slowly over to shake my hand. ‘Maggie, good evening. What have you brought? Ah, yes. Thank you. Thank you.’ She took the leaflets and stood motionless just holding them. I asked if there was anything she would like me to help with. For a moment she did not seem to hear, then she shook her head. ‘No, thank you, Maggie. Everything is arranged. You need not stay.’ She tried to smile.

  All evening I could not rid myself of that image. Mrs Pankhurst, the greatest, bravest, most spoken-of woman in all the world, crumpled, hopeless, lost in a dusty room behind a damp dirty stage. Fighting for something she may never see.

  Miss Sylvia went away for a while. She had been so close to her brother and it had been she who had nursed him and stayed with him during those last dreadful months.

  I thought of how we had so often talked of our brothers together. It was a bond between us, a happiness shared. Now she has none, and I have three. I would swap them all to give Harry back to her, just for a year. Just for a day. To cure her pain. Is that a sin? Very likely. But does not the Bible say, ‘A life for a life’? It does not say whose it should be. Surely, though, if we could choose who lived and who died, would that not make us equal to God? Or to the devil?