Crooked Pieces

by Sarah Grazebrook

  I asked Miss Sylvia if she still believed that. She gave a shuddering sigh. ‘I have to. Yes, I do, truly I do, but sometimes… Such…waste. A life – wasted. Why did she have to do it? There are so many other, better ways. What is gained by this, but a family bereft of a daughter, and friends bereft of a colleague? It was all so…unnecessary.’

  I sold the pig to a butcher. He gave me three pounds and a haunch for roasting. I took it home to Pa. He was mightily pleased and said I should stay to eat with them, but I did not want to.

  They all looked well. Alfie is halfway through building his bed. Unfortunately he is doing it in the front room which leaves little space for anything else and there is more dust from the shavings than in a desert, but Mrs Grant just smiled and put her finger to her lips when I asked how she could bear it. ‘He’s a good lad. The kindest born if you don’t cross him.’ I knew what she meant, for he is a good head taller than Pa now, and broad, too, so it is good sense to leave him be.

  Will has a broken head from falling from a railing he was swinging over. Evelyn said he was dead for ‘near five minutes and then he opened his eyes and started bellowing.’ Being Will, he’s scarce stopped since, but it is a mighty bruise so perhaps for once he is not to blame.

  Mrs Grant thinks baby Ann cannot hear. That is why she does not heed the endless racket in the house. I asked her how she could tell and she said Mrs Benson down the road has two deaf, and recognised the signs. No wonder Ann has no words, poor soul, yet she looks as bonny as a princess. I asked about a cure. Mrs Grant said she did not know. It would take a doctor to say. I said, ‘She is better off deaf than let a doctor near her’, but then I thought, what will her life be if she cannot speak? A life without music and laughter and words? She is my sister and she deserves better than that.

  Lucy, on the other hand, deserves a good slapping, though from the look of her, that is what she has been getting. Her eye was quite purple and she had a scratch on her cheek like a tiger had gone for her. I asked her where she had got it but she just turned her head away and rolled her eyes like it was the stupidest question ever.

  I found a piece of clean muslin and told her to bathe it lest germs take hold, but she would have none of it and was off out of the house not ten minutes after I arrived.

  I asked Mrs Grant about it. She shook her head, not wanting to tell me. ‘Lucy has been in a bit of trouble. It’s nothing. Over now.’

  ‘What trouble? Fighting?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A woman – girl – sloven, if you ask me. Lucy was spending time with the brewer’s man and it turns out he’s married and got three children at home. His wife, if that is what she is, gets wind of it and comes down the alehouse to put young Lucy straight. Anyway, Lucy being Lucy will have none of it and the two of them fall to it like wildcats, so I heard.’

  ‘And what’s the outcome?’

  ‘Oh, he’s gone off back to his wife, but Lucy’s pretty sore about it. She’s not been that well lately, either, but the liquor she pours down her throat at that alehouse it’s scarce surprising.’

  On the way back I wondered if Lucy had ever been happy.

  Tonight, I know not why, I took down the book of poems Fred gave me that glorious Christmas a lifetime ago.

  When he first went away I read it over and over, as though somehow I could reach out to him through its pages, cling on to him through another’s words. I suppose that is what books are for, to unite people who will never meet – never meet again. But for me the agony grew worse, not better, so I put it by. Shut it away. Closed my eyes.

  I was right to, for nothing has changed. The pain came back, ripping through me like an arrow. I heard his voice, his laughter, felt his awful loneliness, as sure as if he had been sitting next to me. ‘Remember me when I am gone away’. How can pain last so long? And be as raw and wicked as the second it began?

  I have buried the book at the bottom of my cupboard, wrapped in my suffragette scarf.

  How long do memories last? My whole life seems to be floating by me, all my mistakes, wrong deeds, cruel words, and the good things, too. Coming top at Sunday School, Clement’s Inn, clothes, money, Fred… There I stop. I am nineteen years old. I cannot live my whole life looking back. I must go forward in hope and sureness of victory at the last. Shoulder to shoulder with my comrades, bravely facing each new ordeal… I even think like a pamphlet now.

  What do I think? Maggie Robins, nineteen. Office worker, vandal, convict, suffragette. Old Maid.

  Is it not strange to live in a society of women? Of course there are convents, but there the women are given over to religious life and anyway get married to Our Lord, which must be interesting. Some schools, I know, take only girls for pupils and they are taught by only women teachers, but still they go home at the end of the day where they will see their brothers and fathers and other menfolk.

  Here it is almost as though men do not exist, except as the enemy. The Grey Men, distant foes, not real as Pa, say, or…other men are real. They do not smell of beer or baccy, they do not fall down drunk on pay-day, they do not lug coal on their backs or take care of you when you are lost or buy you chocolate cake or kiss you…

  How can all men be judged against these pitiful shadows? And yet over and over again I hear it from my comrades: ‘Men are useless. Men are fools. Men are savages.’ How do they know? And why do they go all shaky and fluttery if a gentleman stops by the office to offer his support?

  I asked one lady who was particularly loud on the subject if she thought all men vile.

  ‘Not all, Maggie. But most of them, certainly.’

  ‘How many do you know?’

  ‘I don’t have to know them to know I despise them,’ she snapped. ‘I know I don’t want to be hanged. I don’t have to try it to make sure.’

  This brought forth screams of laughter.

  ‘Are we to gather you’re fond of the species, Maggie?’ twittered her companion.

  ‘Well she was courting that bobby for ages so she must see something in them,’ chimes in a third.

  ‘Bobbies are the very worst. I’d rather marry a pig,’ comes back the first, looking very pink about the gills.

  Still – still I cannot hear him spoken against like that.

  ‘That’s good for it’s very likely what you’ll have to make do with, miss,’ I practically roared, which brought Miss Roe charging into the room to see what was happening.

  ‘Ladies, ladies, what’s going on?’

  We all fell silent, looking sulkier than a row of camels.

  ‘Well it must have been something to have you all shouting at each other. I could hardly hear Christabel down the telephone from France. Is it anything I can help with?’

  Then we all felt guilty for Miss Roe works longer hours than anyone and has been very ill as a result of it.

  ‘It was my fault, Miss Roe, ‘said the pig wife. ‘I was rude to Maggie and upset her.’

  Well, I can be noble too. ‘No, miss, it was all my fault. I should never have spoke as I did.’ So the other two poke their twitchy little noses in and say they were to blame as well and poor Miss Roe looks as though she would happily see us cut each others’ throats if we would only give her ten minutes’ peace to get on with what she was doing.

  So now I am marked for a ‘difficult creature’. I suppose I am. If not ‘difficult’ then ‘different’. Nothing can change that, it seems.

  But still I wonder, what will these helper ladies do when it is all over? When we have won the vote? Will they consent to marry these men they so despise? Will the men want to marry them? What will they do? What will I do? Where will it end? And when?

  Mrs Pankhurst is refusing water as well as food in prison. Some say she has also taken to walking up and down her cell till she drops in sheer exhaustion. Her courage is beyond understanding. Yet how can we ignore what is happening to her?

  Once the high point of a meeting would be the cry, ‘Mrs Pankhurst is free.’ The cu
rtains would sweep open or the doors fly back and in she would stride like the breath of life itself.

  The other night we were gathered in a hall near Kensington when word came round that she was on her way. You could have lit the whole building with the excitement in the air. We waited and waited, hardly daring to breathe, aching for that moment when she would step into the spotlight and our lungs would explode with cheering.

  The ladies on the stage were whispering amongst themselves. At length there was a rustling of the great black drapes at the back and slowly, slowly they began to pull apart. A great roar rocketed round the auditorium, cheering, clapping, stamping feet, then just as suddenly it died away. Died to a sickening, deathly silence for there before us, slumped in a cold iron wheelchair was a skeleton, scarce more. A papery old woman, skin stretched over jagged cheekbones, bulging rocks beneath glassy wandering eyes, hands clawing at the blanket tucked around her like a shroud.

  A great sort of sigh sounded round the hall. Like something dying. That something, I thought that night, was hope.

  But it was not so, for four days later Mrs Pankhurst was back on her feet inspiring us, urging us on as though the police were not at the door waiting to drag her back to torture. ‘The only recklessness that suffragettes have ever shown has been about their own lives. It has never been, and it never will be, the policy of the Women’s Social and Political Union recklessly to endanger human life. We leave that to the enemy. Be militant each in your own way. And my last word is to the Government: I incite this meeting to rebellion.’

  How could we let her down?

  There is much debate in the press for the voters do not like to see women racked and broken by the very government they have put in place. Some think it ‘uncivilised’, ‘barbaric’, ‘unsporting’! Others say, ‘Let them starve. Give them food, if they will not eat it, so be it.’

  The Government takes no notice. Perhaps they are waiting for us all to die then they need not worry about giving women the vote at all. But if we do die, where will their next lot of voters come from, for there will be no children to follow on? These are wild thoughts. For now all that matters is surviving. I know I can, but what of Mrs Pankhurst, so frail and getting weaker every day? If only there was a way to protect her.

  I mentioned this to Miss Roe. ‘You mean like a bodyguard? To stand between her and the police, Maggie?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so.’

  ‘That is a brilliant idea. But we should need some very strong women and they would need to be properly trained.’

  ‘Perhaps Mrs Garrud could be persuaded…?’

  At last! I have a chance to prove myself again. To make my mark. To show them I am truly worthy of the Cause.

  There are thirty of us and we train each Tuesday in whatever place is considered safe from spying eyes. We do drill – marching in lines and stamping (this seems silly to me, as if anything will tell the bobbies we are coming it is the sound of thundering feet).

  Mrs Garrud has undertaken to instruct everyone in jiu-jitsu and I am her assistant. It makes me smile to see how little I must have known when I first started. Some of the girls scarce know their left hand from their right which, though it makes us laugh when we are practising, will prove a sore problem if we are ever called upon to attack.

  Miss Christabel has taken on a new cause – women of the street. She says it is wrong to blame them and not the men who use them. I am surprised she thinks so, for she always told us we should act for ourselves and not be slaves to others, although hunger is the hardest master of all, I suppose.

  The clergy are mighty pleased with her and gather in great black clumps to burble their support. It would be wrong of me to think perhaps this is just great cleverness on Miss Christabel’s part and not something she greatly cares about in truth. It is certainly strange to have the churchmen on our side. I suppose they do not count as real men so do not have to be shunned as others are. For me they are as bad as the politicians – worse, for they think themselves so saintly.

  Miss Sylvia was waiting for me at my lodgings tonight. She was in the parlour and Mrs Garrud went straightway to bring me a cup of tea, then left us. I knew at once it must be something bad.

  ‘Maggie, I came as fast as I could. Your sister is very ill. She is being cared for now and we all hope so hard for a…happy conclusion.’

  I tried to muster my thoughts. ‘Mrs Grant told me she thought she could not hear.’

  Confusion spread across her face. ‘Lucy?’

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘Lucy is gravely ill. She had an operation. It did not go well. There is a chance… She is in the Bow Infirmary. Miss Annie has sent for the medicines they prescribe.’

  ‘An operation?’

  She looked away. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of operation?’

  Miss Sylvia took my hand and now she did look at me. ‘You remember how I once said it would be so good if we could change things? But we cannot always?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lucy was to have a child, Maggie. The man, it seems, has disappeared or wanted nothing to do with her. In her fear and distress she went to a…what can I call her?

  ‘The woman tried to pierce the baby with a button hook and pull it out. The hook was not clean. Lucy’s blood is poisoned.’

  I heard a cup go clattering to the floor.

  We went by cab. Fast as it was, it seemed to take forever.

  The infirmary, dark and cheerless, blocking out the evening sun’s last rays. Along stone passageways, nurses sliding past, eyes downcast. Lamps dim as prison, making everyone look sick. At the end of a long low room, airless and stinking, Lucy crammed on to an iron bed, eyes shut, skin like squashed blackberries, breath like a broken whistle. She did not stir.

  Miss Sylvia went to find a doctor. When he came I saw he was young though his eyes were not. ‘I am very sorry, Miss Robins. We have done our best. The operation has not gone as we had hoped.’

  ‘Why? What have you done to her? Why is she this…this awful colour?’

  He shook his head. ‘The womb was terribly infected. We have removed what remained of the foetus, the unborn child, and disinfected the wounds as best we could, but the septicaemia – poisoning is spreading. She has not responded to the medications we have given her.’

  ‘Well, give her some more. Something different. There must be something. You cannot just leave her – leave her to… She’s sixteen years old. She is young. She’s only young. She is… She’s my sister.’ My knees gave way beneath me.

  How many more? How many more of my family is God going to take? All of them? And why not me? Because I have to stay and bear it. That is the punishment.

  Miss Sylvia was talking to the doctor but I heard nothing. She touched my shoulder. ‘Maggie. Maggie, listen. There is just a chance…’

  The doctor crouched down beside me. ‘I cannot promise…it has not been tried before…’

  ‘What? What? What?’

  ‘In our laboratory we are experimenting with a new bacterial mould. It has been proved to halt putrefaction in the body of a rat but no one has yet tested it on a human being. I cannot guarantee…’

  I clutched his arm. ‘Will it save her?’

  ‘I cannot tell. Nothing else will, unless you believe in miracles.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You understand there is no certainty that this will work?’

  ‘There is no certainty of anything in this life.’

  He almost smiled.

  I stayed the night at Miss Sylvia’s lodgings. I knew I should go to Pa’s but I could not face it. A house full of misery. Evelyn begging me to make Lucy well again. How many times must I let her down?

  We sat together by the fire and drank beef tea, and toasted bread and talked. She told me how her East End mission is growing faster than she can keep up with, but that she has never in her life been happier. ‘I could not ask for more loyal, willing helpers, men and women. We are making such strides, Maggie. I have three
women running a reading class for the children that cannot afford Poor School, and others offering to take clean linen to the sick, and a soup kitchen – goodness, it’s better than The Savoy sometimes. I should sell the recipe to their chef.’

  ‘You’d be better selling it to Holloway, miss. They’ve more customers.’

  She laughed. ‘Yes, well, if you think they’d appreciate it…’

  I told her about the Bodyguard and how two of the volunteers had black eyes from trying to swing their batons like David at Goliath and forgetting to let go.

  Miss Sylvia has her own bodyguard.

  ‘“The People’s Army”, we call it. They are quite brilliant. Every time I am speaking and word comes of a raid, they line up close by the platform and as the police come storming on to the stage, they cry, “Jump, Sylvia, Jump”, and I just launch myself into the air like a trapeze artist and they catch me and rush me out of the building.’

  ‘What happens if they miss?’

  Miss Sylvia swallowed. ‘Well, I rather fancy I shall be the main ingredient for the next soup run, but so far, touch wood, they never have. Anyway, it’s better not to dwell on what may go wrong, I rather think, don’t you? There are too many imponderables.’

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Oh, things that you don’t know about until it’s too late to do anything. Things you couldn’t hope to change.’

  ‘Like what’s happened to Lucy?’

  She nodded sadly. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Dr Rowan is a very fine physician, Maggie. If anyone can save your sister…’

  We were quiet for a while, me thinking, if he is so fine what is he doing in a poor people’s infirmary? Miss Sylvia, something altogether different, for at last she raised her eyes from the fire and said, ‘I want to tell you something, Maggie.’