Dorothy was experiencing the old pull toward him … there was nobody quite like him. Her throat hurt with the effort of holding back tears; with the effort of not putting her arms around him. She’d give anything to lean into his solid warmth one last time. The strength of the desire was like a physical force, stronger than she was. She wanted to dissolve into him, to give herself over to being shaped by him … One hand reached toward him, halted before it touched him. She knew that if she succumbed, she would never summon the strength to break free. Sternly, she reminded herself that being with him had nearly destroyed her. It was wrong; it couldn’t lead to happiness. She forced her hand to drop. Though the room was warm, she felt shivery and sick in her stomach.
Bertie stood up and walked toward her, both hands outstretched. “My darling Dora, you aren’t yourself. You’ve been through a horrible ordeal, and you’re weaker than you realize. Don’t break us up now, you might feel differently when you’re better.”
Dorothy shook her head. “I’ve made up my mind. There’s nothing more to say.”
Despite the certainty with which she spoke, she couldn’t extinguish the wild hope that he would suddenly turn into the person she was searching for … that he would say or do some marvelous thing to redeem himself and save them both.
There was silence.
“I’ve handed in my notice at work,” she said at last.
Bertie made a sound that expressed amazement and derision. “Why chuck everything over at once? What a fearfully silly thing to do.”
“It’s hard to explain … I need a complete break, to be totally free, to start over…”
“How will you survive? What are you going to do?”
Involuntarily, his hand reached toward the inside pocket of his jacket, where he kept his wallet.
Dorothy shook her head. “I shall manage.”
He sighed. “I can’t help feeling that you’ve taken leave of your senses.”
She bristled. “On the contrary; I’ve never felt so sane and clearheaded in my life.”
There was another pause. Eventually, Bertie said “You’ll still support me, take an interest in my work?”
She nodded, unable to meet his eyes.
He said sadly, “You know where to find me if you need me.”
* * *
VERONICA STOOD IN the middle of her room. A wild disorder of garments and belongings were strewn over the floor, and over every surface. She looked frail and sickly; her color was bad and her eyes seemed too large for her thin face. Making her way to the bed, she began to fold a heap of blouses; her movements were slow and careful. Her old speed and supple grace, her way of throwing herself into everything she did, had gone.
She was packing to go home, in disgrace. Her brother’s goodwill and indulgence, stretched to its utmost limit on so many occasions, had finally snapped under the indelible dishonor of prison.
Veronica paused in the middle of what she was doing, and sat down heavily on the bed.
“Are you all right?” Dorothy asked. “Should you be seen by a doctor, in case? The things they did to you could have caused an internal injury.”
“Oh, I’m not too bad. I do get tired more easily these days, but I expect that a combination of taking it easy and Mother’s cooking will put me right.”
“I can’t imagine how ghastly it must have been.”
“I haven’t told you about the forcible feeding.”
Dorothy pressed her lips together. “I didn’t ask, because I don’t want to make you relive it.”
“I’ll tell you…” Veronica paused, half closing her eyes. She began to speak in a flat expressionless voice, very matter of fact, as though she was talking about someone else.
“It took five of them to do it. Two wardresses pinned my arms down, one wrenched back my head, and one had both feet, stretching my limbs to their limit, so that my body took on the shape of a cross. The doctor bent over my chest to get at my mouth; he had to lean on my knees to do it. I’d closed my mouth tightly, but he managed to prise it open by digging the sharp edge of his thumbnail into my lips. He forced my jaws wide, as far as they would stretch, and a gag was tied so my teeth couldn’t close. A rubber tube was pushed down my throat—it seemed enormous, far too thick to do the job—and it made me choke, from the second it touched the back of my throat till it was thrust into my stomach. It seemed to take them forever to get it into me; I can’t describe the agony of it. The choking, the lack of air got worse and worse; I was struggling desperately for breath, convinced I was going to suffocate. I’m sure they passed the tube too far down, because it caused an excruciating pain in my side.
“Then liquid food was poured very quickly into my stomach, through a funnel. My eardrums felt like they were exploding; there was a terrible burning in my chest, which I could feel to the end of my breastbone. It was too much food, too fast, and I was immediately sick over the doctor and wardresses. The act of vomiting made me double up involuntarily, but the wardresses pressed my head back and the doctor leant on my knees to keep me straight. God, it was humiliating! Vomit gushed everywhere, over my face and hair. It soaked through my dress and splashed onto their clothes and shoes. There was so much of it, and it simply stank; it was a revolting mess. It seemed an age before they took the tube out, and when it came up, it felt like it was tearing out the whole of my insides with it.
“By that stage, I could hardly remember who I was, let alone why I was there. I forgot equal rights; I forgot the other suffragettes. I was aware of nothing but my own misery. Before the doctor walked out, he slapped me across the face. It wasn’t a forceful blow, but it seemed to express how much he despised me and my behavior … I was left almost fainting in a pool of sick. I was gripped by a fit of shivering and I couldn’t move; they said it was too late at night to fetch a change of clothes for me.”
“But that’s inhuman! You wouldn’t treat an animal like that!”
“Exactly. Yet this torture is happening to suffragettes in gaols all over the country, and it’s sanctioned by His Majesty’s Government … I was fed like that four or five times, and each time was worse than the one that went before, partly, I think, because knowing what was in store made the anticipation of it an utter torment.”
Dorothy was silent, battling for composure.
“To tell the truth, I feel rather broken by it all,” Veronica went on. “Damaged in health, and weakened in spirit. I keep asking myself what it was for. All our protests failed, and I’m not sure they were worth the price … the vote seems further away than ever. I’m thinking of giving up on the suffrage, actually.”
It was almost more than Dorothy could bear to hear Veronica talk like this. “Your march failed, but one day the suffragettes will succeed,” she said stoutly.
“Do you think so? Right now, having the vote seems as unlikely as you and I being allowed to love each other openly.”
Dorothy paused for a moment, before saying softly “I’m sure a time will come for both. It just isn’t now.”
“Hmm.” Veronica was examining the ragged skin around her fingernails. “At any rate, I’ve realized you were right. We can’t stand up against the whole world.”
“Don’t. It kills me to hear you sound so defeated.”
Shrugging her shoulders, Veronica hauled herself to her feet and turned back to her packing; for a time, they were silent.
“Are you looking forward to going home?” Dorothy asked, at last.
“Yes, I am, although being with them is only a different kind of prison—a more luxurious one, with an unstinting clothes allowance.” She gave Dorothy the ghost of a smile. “It’s odd, but I feel I scarcely want to be free; I’ve lost the will. I never realized how habit forming obedience is. You never use reason or judgment in prison; you’re told what to do, and you follow orders without query or hesitation. The idea of thinking for myself, or taking any kind of initiative is quite frightening.”
There was another pause.
“I’m glad Benjamin
came to visit you,” Dorothy said.
“I’ve never been so surprised in my life as I was to see him. I suppose you told him I was in prison?”
“Yes.” Dorothy clamped her mouth shut to stop herself confessing that his call had been made entirely at her suggestion.
Dorothy could picture Benjamin in the horrible visiting room: the unabashedly soulful look on his face as he took in the grime and the smell, and steeled himself for a difficult meeting, not wanting to disappoint Dorothy. He would have seemed like a visitor from another world in the frock coat and silk hat of his hard-won city status, waiting for Veronica with barely suppressed impatience, his case of legal documents under his arm. These details would not have been lost on the fearsome wardresses. Dorothy hoped his visit had resulted in more careful treatment for Veronica.
Dorothy could see Veronica emerging, at last, from the bowels of the building, her beauty dimmed but not extinguished by the graceless uniform. She would have been nonplussed and speechless at the unexpected sight of Benjamin, gathering all her self-possession to manage the occasion. There would have been no sign of the laughter he had found so irrelevant and annoying at their first meeting. Benjamin had probably gazed at her in silence, the muscles in his face contracting and his eyebrows raised with effort as he sought phrases to alleviate his discomfiture, saying something like, “Hello. You will most certainly not have been expecting me.” How could he fail to be moved by the radiantly accepting, grateful smile that would have greeted his words?
Dorothy wondered what they had talked about. Had it dawned on him gradually, or all at once, that Veronica was intelligent and brave as well as beautiful; that she had principles and was prepared to endure real suffering for the sake of them?
“He said he would come and see me at home,” Veronica was saying. Dorothy couldn’t, for a few moments, work out what the unfamiliar tone in her voice meant … she realized, with a shock, that it expressed successful rivalry! Veronica was competing with her for Benjamin; worse still, she believed herself victorious.
Dorothy was silent, struggling to come to terms with the fact that the train of events she’d set in motion had assumed an unstoppable life of its own, and was sliding rapidly away from her. She looked at Veronica standing in front of the French windows. Cold sunlight streamed in through the glass, falling sharply over her pale face and shoulders. There was no depth in the light. Dorothy wondered if this was how a novelist might feel who, having breathed life into his characters, unexpectedly found they had assumed independent wills, and were refusing to be controlled.
“I don’t know what Mother will make of Benjamin…” Veronica sounded less confident. “He won’t exactly fit in with her idea of an acceptable suitor.”
There was another hesitation.
“Why can’t we stay the way we were?” Veronica asked suddenly, with a flash of her old impulsiveness. Dorothy breathed her relief: the essence of their relationship was unchanged.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go away somewhere. To France or Italy; anywhere nobody knows us or cares what we are to each other. Let’s pack up and leave, just the two of us.”
“I wish we could.”
“God, we’ve been happy together. I can hardly bear to leave all this. I’ve never been so happy in my life as I am with you.”
Veronica walked over and slipped an arm around her waist; her lips brushed the side of Dorothy’s mouth. Gentle and sweet, almost chaste, her touch brought their old world all about them: peerless, inextinguishable. They fell silent, reveling in the completeness of it. The whole of life flowed between them, within them, in a way no man and woman, however well matched, could hope to attain.
In a few hours, Veronica would be isolated with her family’s chilly disapproval.
* * *
VERONICA WAS READY. Dorothy’s hands felt large and shaky, and her feet were cold. The room looked barren and desolate without the clutter Veronica attracted. It was funny how quickly a room died without an inhabitant. Veronica turned off the gas and stood for a moment in the doorway, taking one last look. She closed the door softly and they walked downstairs together. Her luggage was waiting in the hall.
They both began to talk at once; then fell silent at the same moment, waiting for the other to speak.
“What did you want to say?” Dorothy asked.
“Oh no, you go first.”
“I expect the cab is here. You’d better hurry.”
Suddenly, a rain of tears was coming down Dorothy’s cheeks. They fell softly and copiously, stoically, as though without her realizing, they had been getting ready for this preordained moment.
“Darling! Don’t!” Veronica put her arms around her and kissed her tenderly, murmuring sweet endearments. “It’s just a temporary good-bye, I promise you. I promise I’ll come back. I’ll find a way, somehow.”
Dorothy, struggling for breath through tears, wondered if the words were prompted only by Veronica’s wish to retain her hold over Dorothy. Perhaps they stemmed from her innate warmth, or were simply crumbs of comfort tossed out to a mortally hurt soul.
Veronica went, leaving the house stricken.
Dorothy was engulfed by sadness. It was like being buried alive; a kind of panic. She curled up on the floor of her room, beyond tears.
Her life was ripped up at the roots. She had lost everything: the baby, Bertie, Veronica. Nothing would ever be as good, or as vivid, as having them. And now, there was no one who would be sorry if she disappeared off the face of the earth. The thought made her flinch. It was the truth; there was no use denying it. The pretense of living would continue. She had destroyed all her ties with people, but for what?
Grinding poverty loomed. She would go on, dragging herself though her colorless existence, alone. She was worthless, an encumbrance, excluded from happiness forever. To die now and put an end to her suffering would be a relief.
She hauled herself away from this thought, searching her mind wearily for something meaningful … Amidst the rubble of her life, something shone … alive. It was the pile of closely written pages on her small table. But their value was uncertain—her writing might turn out to be shallow and empty after all. She forced herself to sit up and look at the growing paper stack. The sight was reassuring; it was all that anchored her to the world.
Something at the core of life steadied and clarified. She wrote because she had to; it was salvation, as essential as breathing. For the sake of her writing, she needed to free herself from those who would shape and possess her. It was for this she had smashed her way to a clear horizon.
Nineteen
Dorothy sat on the beach at Porthcothan Bay, a strip of white sand enclosed by soaring brown cliffs. She leaned against a rock, enjoying the sun on her face and the briny smell of salt air mingling with the scent of her sun-warmed skin. London seemed far away.
The air felt like silk. Taking a warm handful of sand, she let it trickle through her fingers; it glinted in the sunshine, as finely textured as caster sugar. The tide was out. Splinters of sunlight danced on the ripples and sparkled over the bodies of seagulls hovering and dipping above the lacy shallows, emitting hoarse cries. A belt of mist hugged the horizon; sea dissolved invisibly into sky. Dorothy balanced her writing pad on her knees, intending to record it all. But finding herself strangely disinclined to set down a word, she simply sat, soaking up her surroundings like a sponge.
Why did being free make her feel guilty? Knowing she could move on and start afresh whenever she wanted; looking at people who were tied down with pitying disdain. But her freedom was tinged with a loneliness and despair that they would never experience. It was only by the pain of cutting loose that one could have the whole of life around one, continuously.
* * *
FROM THE WINDOW of her room in the guesthouse, she could see the pearl-blue sky, with patches of pink fleecy cloud scudding across it. The small garden, backed by feathery trees, was bright coppery gold in the light of the sinking sun.
; She had come to Cornwall to finish her second novel. The first had been published to glowing reviews. “Miss Dorothy Richardson’s work is like nothing else in modern literature,” the novelist Frank Swinnerton enthused. “It has a precision and a brilliant, inexorable veracity, which no other writer attains. It is bound to influence novelists of the future … Of its importance there is no question.” “No one could read this book and disregard her,” trumpeted The Spectator. “For the thing which Miss Richardson creates is as actual as the paper, ink, and boards by whose medium it is conveyed to the reader … the perusal of the book amounts to a sort of vicarious living.”
A single shadow dimmed her satisfaction: a grudging article by Virginia Woolf, Sir Leslie Stephen’s daughter. Virginia’s own first novel was about to be published by Gerald Duckworth, who was also Dorothy’s publisher. “I suppose the danger of her method is the damned egoistical self, which ruins Richardson to my mind,” Virginia had written. “Is one pliant and rich enough to provide a wall for the book without its becoming … narrowing and restricting?”
Despite the critical, disaffected presence of Virginia in the background, recognition finally seemed to be within Dorothy’s reach. She could not pronounce the word fame, even to herself.
There seemed to be an invisible balance in life, making sure that whenever something was lost, a new thing arrived to take its place … you were never left totally bereft … somebody or something making sure that life did not become absolutely unendurable.
She bent over the unsteady table, rereading the pages spread in front of her. The manuscript seemed somehow more alive than a book trussed up in its tidy binding.
The bond between herself and her work was closer than any other in her life. It was the source of the most profound joy she knew. The recording of impressions had become a necessity; without it, she was not fully alive. All roads in her life had brought her to it.
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