No Greater Love

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  What had she done? Maggie asked herself miserably. What had she achieved by her reckless protest? She had lost her liberty and her family had lost her precious wages, for which she would probably never be forgiven. Worst of all, women were no nearer to winning the vote than they had been two days ago. She had imagined herself as a romantic martyr to the cause, just like Emily Davison, but no one would remember the working-class Maggie Beaton, she told herself harshly. Heroines did not come from mean dwellings in Gun Street and common widows’ daughters did not get themselves into history books, Maggie thought with self-mockery.

  Sometime towards evening, her cell was unlocked and food brought in. Maggie’s depression lifted to see the steaming mug of tea and her mouth began to water at the aroma of suet dumpling wafting from the tin. The wardress dumped the meal on the floor.

  Maggie hurried over, her stomach hollow with hunger. She realised she had eaten little more than bread and tea since breakfast with the Dobsons two days ago. She grabbed the mug and the wardress cackled.

  ‘Didn’t take you long to give in to temptation, did it?’

  Maggie gave her a suspicious look. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Thought proper suffragettes went on hunger strike,’ the woman mocked. ‘Still, you don’t look tough enough for that carry-on. You’ll last the six months, you will. Probably looking forward to it, I bet. Better food in here than at home, eh? That why you done it?’ She let out another belly laugh.

  The woman’s scorn was like a slap in the face. Maggie gasped with indignation. How dare this wardress treat her like common muck? she fumed. She was just as dedicated as any of the others in the movement and she would show this ignorant, sour-faced gaoler how tough she could be.

  ‘I’m just as strong as any posh suffragettes you’ve had in here,’ Maggie answered sharply. ‘Take your bloody suet dumplings and stick them up your backside! I’ll not be eating them!’

  Maggie kicked the tin violently towards the door and the astonished prison warder. The woman retreated hastily and slammed the door, shouting, ‘You’ll have to clear up your own mess, you filthy bitch.’

  Maggie hurled the mug of tea at the metal door and watched the brown liquid splatter onto the walls and floor.

  ‘I’m a political prisoner!’ she cried ‘I demand to have me own clothes back. I’ll not clear up my mess or any other bugger’s! I’m no criminal. The criminals are the coppers who put me here, aye, and that fat magistrate! And the male politicians who won’t give us the vote. Let them clear up the filth!’

  Maggie carried on ranting, long after the wardress was out of earshot. But she did not care, her words gave her courage and shook her out of her former despair. It did matter what insignificant Maggie Beaton did, she told herself. For it was only by the acts and sacrifices of scores of individuals like herself that their cause would be advanced. They could starve her and humiliate her, but she would not be broken, Maggie vowed. They would never break her!

  ***

  George Gordon paced around the streets of Newcastle wondering what to do. He entered a public house, but left before ordering a pint. Eventually he retraced his steps to Carliol Square and looked up at the grim walls of the prison. Where was Maggie being held? he wondered. Was she here at all or had she been taken to another gaol? How would her delicate young body stand up to six months of prison life? he fretted. Worse still, would she refuse food and starve herself to death?

  He ground his teeth in the agony of not knowing. It was nearly a week now since her sentencing and that depressing morning in court, which he had skipped work to witness. She had seemed so alone and vulnerable, George had wanted to shout at the censorious well-to-do magistrates for being so vindictive. And yet he had gone there himself to see Maggie brought to justice, to make sure she got her comeuppance for spoiling their launch. He had wanted her punished.

  It should have been a special day of celebration for all the workers, a moment of pride when the ship broke its shackles and took to the water, proving their craftsmanship. But Maggie’s unseemly protest had belittled the occasion as if it were of no importance whatsoever. He had been astounded to see her appear in the centre of the launch party, brandishing her banner in their horrified faces. She seemed to be telling the world they had missed the point, that their day of celebration was nothing more than a silly child’s party compared to the long vital struggle for justice to which she was vainly drawing attention.

  ‘Oh Maggie!’ He grimaced at the fortress walls in frustration. He lit a cigarette. It pained him to think of how he had scorned her suffragism, of how they had parted so acrimoniously because he would not take her political activities seriously. He had tolerated her ideals because he fancied her and wanted her company, but now he could see how his condescension had angered her.

  He had gone to the court for revenge, hoping to see her suffer because she had rejected him. Instead, he had been shamed by her courage. Watching her contemptuous silence in the police court and her defiant cry when being led away, he had been filled with admiration. Maggie Beaton, lowly clerk and working-class girl of no more than twenty, had taken on the Establishment - the Prime Minister, the Pearsons, the police - and lost, but lost with dignity.

  George shook his head. She had not cared how unpopular her suffragism made her with her family or workmates, or with him, she had still gone ahead and done it. He knew of no brothers in the union or at work who were so single-minded and it made him feel shame for the way he and other unionists belittled the concerns of women like Maggie.

  Grinding the cigarette beneath his boot, he came to a decision. It took him half an hour to find where Rose Johnstone lived, the suffragette friend Maggie had often talked about. It turned out to be not far from where he lived in Rye Hill. A diminutive, pink-faced woman answered his knocking, who turned out to be Rose’s mother.

  ‘Rose is out,’ she told him cautiously.

  He asked if he could wait. She left him to sit in silence in a neat, threadbare parlour, spotlessly clean and smelling of lavender. George was unnerved enough to rest his boots on his cap for fear of dirtying the red and gold patterned rug.

  Rose appeared just as he was contemplating flight. He stood as she came in, rescuing his soiled cap. She regarded him suspiciously.

  ‘Have you seen her - Maggie?’ he asked immediately.

  ‘No, they won’t allow visitors.’ Rose remained standing. ‘Probably because of the state they’ll have reduced her to.’

  She watched his face pucker in concern. It was a handsome, square face, dominated by a thick moustache and hooded eyes that hinted of sensuality. Rose could understand what had attracted Maggie to this man, yet she was jealous to think he had tried to win away her protégée and distract Maggie from her work.

  ‘What state?’ he asked anxiously.

  Rose decided to be brutal; why should he be spared the anguish that ate away inside her? ‘She’ll have been without food for a week - they’ll be force-feeding her by now. Don’t you know what that does to a woman?’

  George gave an exclamation of horror and sat down, covering his face with his dirt-ingrained hands.

  Rose felt a twinge of pity. ‘What is it you’ve come for?’ she asked.

  George looked up at the severe schoolteacher and shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to do something for her - makeup for...’

  ‘For not taking her seriously before?’ Rose demanded ‘You hurt her greatly by scorning her beliefs. She wanted your approval, couldn’t you see that?’

  ‘No,’ George admitted quietly. ‘I didn’t see the half of it.’ He looked at her accusing bespectacled eyes and felt the awkwardness of a scolded child. He did not much like Maggie’s friend, but it would do no good to argue with her. He imagined few people did.

  He stood up to leave.

  ‘Wait,’ Rose suddenly stopped him. ‘Have some tea with us.’

  ‘No, ta,’ George replied, eager to be gone.

  ‘Please,’ Rose ins
isted. ‘I didn’t mean to be so sharp with you - it’s just the worry over Maggie. It’d be nice to talk to someone about her. Her mother and sisters won’t have anything to do with me, you see. Please stay.’

  George nodded. ‘They’re a stubborn lot, the Beatons,’ he grunted.

  Rose smiled at him for the first time. ‘And Maggie’s the most stubborn of them all.’

  George sighed. ‘Aye. And look where it’s got her.’ They were silent for a moment, each contemplating Maggie’s ordeal. ‘I just want you to know, Miss Johnstone,’ George spoke with sudden passion, ‘that when she comes out I’m here to help if she needs me. You will tell her that, won’t you?’

  ***

  Maggie was filled with dread at the ominous rumbling sound of the trolley approaching her cell. The first time she had not known what it signified, but she had barricaded the cell door with her chair and bed anyway. It had taken them twenty minutes to break in and four irate wardresses to pin her to the floor. Burdon, the hard-faced wardress who had taunted Maggie on her arrival, had shouted at the others, ‘Lie on the stupid bitch!’

  Panting and swearing, they had finally overcome their writhing victim and the four hefty women had her spread-eagled on the ground. Then two doctors had entered the cell, dragging the grim trolley with them. While Burdon gripped her shoulders, one of the doctors had wrenched her head back by the hair and begun to ram the stiff nozzle of a rubber tube up her left nostril.

  Maggie had screamed in agony as the tube was shoved further and further in, until it felt as if it had reached inside her eye and would force it from its socket.

  ‘You don’t have to endure this,’ the doctor told her coldly. ‘If you behaved yourself and took your food, you’d save us all a lot of trouble.’

  Maggie had been in too much torment to answer. All she could do was to stare in wide-eyed terror as the other doctor calmly lifted up the funnel attached to the other end of the tube and began to pour in his evil concoction of cocoa and Bovril and medicines designed to keep her alive.

  As the liquid gushed up her nose and down her gullet, Maggie had felt sure she would choke and drown in the brown liquid. It seemed to go on for an age. She wanted to vomit, but could not.

  Finally the torture stopped and they all left abruptly, leaving her sick and dazed and quivering on the cell floor. She had lain bruised and aching for what seemed like hours, before dragging herself onto her bed and crying herself to sleep. That had been two weeks ago and they had come every day since. Now Maggie listened with fear and disgust for the sound of the doctors’ trolley and prayed feverishly for delivery.

  She heard the cell door being unlocked and gripped the pipe that ran along the floor with what strength she could. She knew the wardresses found her resistance weakening with every visit, so this time she had planned a surprise for them and the disdainful doctors.

  ‘Bloody hell, there’s a stink in here!’ the young wardress, Stevens, cried as she entered.

  ‘Look what she’s done, Dr Shaw!’ Burden shrieked in disgust. ‘She’s worse than an animal.’

  Maggie watched them move aside like worried sheep to make way for the stout, balding figure of Dr Shaw. She felt a moment of triumph as a look of appalled distaste creased his jowled face.

  ‘My God!’ he exclaimed.

  The other doctor, the younger one who stood and dispassionately poured liquid down the tube, came in to look. He stared curiously as if she were some outlandish species he had never studied before.

  Here she was, exhausted but still defiant, her prison clothes smeared in the liquid faeces that her force-feeding had produced. She could hardly smell her own excrement for her sense of taste and smell appeared to have wasted away with her appetite and strength. But she could tell that this time, for a brief, triumphant moment, she had defeated them.

  ‘I’m a political prisoner, Dr Shaw,’ Maggie croaked. ‘I demand the right to be treated differently. I want visitors. I want justice. How do you sleep at night after your dirty work, Dr Shaw? I thought doctors were healers not torturers...’ Her voice broke.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be treated differently,’ the furious doctor snapped. He turned to young Stevens. ‘Fetch a bucket of cold water and wash her down. You,’ he spoke to Burdon, ‘summon the head wardress. After we’ve fed this Jezebel I’m sure your superiors will see fit to lock her in the punishment cell.’

  Burdon moved at once, but Stevens hesitated, aghast at what she was being asked to do.

  ‘Couldn’t we just leave her for a bit, doctor?’ she asked, her plump cheeks scarlet.

  ‘Do as Dr Shaw says,’ Burdon ordered with a shove, ‘or you’ll be hoyed out on the street.’

  They all left and locked the door, leaving a half-hysterical Maggie rocking with laughter. She began to sing The Women’s Marseillaise.

  ‘To Freedom’s cause till death - we swear our fealty. March on! March on!’ The effort made Maggie breathless. ‘Face - to the Dawn. The dawn ... of... Liberty!’

  By the time the feeding party returned, grimly determined to have their way, Maggie had little energy to resist. Stevens drenched her in a deluge of cold water that left her spluttering and gasping for breath and then the women grabbed her arms and legs and held her down.

  Dr Shaw seemed to take a delight in forcing the tube up her swollen and bloodied nose and Maggie screamed as if the pain would kill her. The brutality of the feeding and the shock of the cold water made her faint. She could feel consciousness ebbing from her in sickening waves. At one moment she was acutely aware of the young doctor’s pale, emotionless face above her and the relentless trickle of liquid down her throat; at the next, her hostile attendants were wavering and indistinct.

  Maggie wondered if this was what it felt like to die. At least the pain will stop if I do, she thought. Her whole body shuddered and ached in an uncontrollable spasm and she could not recall what it felt like to be intact. Her battered body had no memory of a time before this violation. She cried out to be left alone, but no words came from her flooded throat.

  Then the tube was wrenched out like a hot knife and Maggie passed out with the pain.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mabel Beaton laboured half-heartedly with a wooden spoon in the large cracked bowl. She sighed and put down the cake mixture, her arms aching from the effort. Why was it, she thought with vexation, that she was not more pleased with Susan’s engagement to Richard Turvey?

  The young Londoner had approached her and asked for her daughter’s hand in marriage with all his usual charm. These days he wore a new air of prosperity about him since he had secured a new office job down on the quayside. Susan had been delighted with his move from what she saw as insecure and dubious employment in the entertainment world to respectability, and Mabel was encouraged by this show of responsibility too. Richard had been vague about his new job, but from what she could gather, she understood it was to do with exporting armaments for one of Pearson’s subsidiary companies. Yet she had never quite trusted him after Maggie’s attack in town in which she privately suspected he had been involved in some way.

  But perhaps it was just the upset over Maggie’s arrest and the exhaustion of the past weeks coping without her wages that had left her feeling weak and depressed, Mabel thought. At first she had been worried at Maggie’s disappearance, then furious at her brief notoriety at the launch and in the local press after her court appearance. Mabel had refused to let any of the family attend and had given Jimmy a severe beating for conspiring to get clothes to Maggie. She had refused to speak to Granny Beaton for a fortnight on discovering she had squandered her expensive cape on the escapade and told the old woman that she did not care if she froze this winter as a result. Her mother-in-law was becoming an increasing burden since Maggie’s arrest, with her mind withdrawing into a haunted past.

  But it was now two months since Maggie had been imprisoned and Mabel’s anger was spent. She missed her daughter and fretted over her treatment and knew that old Mrs Beaton did too. Yet it st
ill perplexed her why Maggie had so readily given up her good job and secure future for this obsession with women’s rights. Mabel had invested all her hopes in her brightest daughter and now they were as spent as the ashes in the grate.

  ‘Let me finish that, lassie,’ Granny Beaton interrupted her thoughts, hobbling across from the fire where she had been sitting in a reverie.

  Mabel took up the spoon and began to beat again.

  ‘I can manage,’ she said shortly.

  ‘Why don’t you go and lie down for a wee bit?’ her mother-in-law suggested gently. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Mabel answered crossly, hating attention being drawn to her ill health. Last week she had taken to her bed for two days with pains in her chest and arms, and Susan had to help Helen with the clothes business. Her thick hair, of which she had been so proud, was now completely silver and thinning on her scalp. When she looked in the mirror she saw a puffy grey-faced woman of nearer sixty than her forty-eight years. These days she felt old as well as looking it.

  ‘What are you making, dearie?’ Granny asked, staring half-blindly at the bowl.

  ‘The cake for Susan and Richard’s betrothal party,’ Mabel said, pausing again. ‘I told you before.’

  Granny Beaton looked at her vacantly for a moment.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already, Mrs Beaton?’ Mabel said in irritation.

  ‘Susan’s getting married?’ Granny Beaton asked.

  ‘Aye, to Richard Turvey, the lad from London.’

  ‘Richard?’ For a moment the old woman seemed to struggle with her memory, then, ‘Och, aye. The boy from London.’

  The old wife! Mabel thought impatiently. She doubted her mother-in-law would remember Maggie when she finally came home. Then the older woman surprised her with a moment of lucidity.