‘Here, let me.’ Sally’s cold, efficient hands busied themselves.
‘Lady Muck can’t undress herself?’ asked one of the wardresses, not too ill-naturedly.
‘There.’ Sally contrived as best she could to come between Hannah and the amused, derisive eyes that were being turned upon her as she tugged the rough grey chemise over her head. ‘You’ll have to let your hair down too.’
All the women were shaking their hair out. Hannah started her usual hunt for the host of hairpins that were needed to secure her heavy hair. With an angry and enormous effort of will she tried to stop the shaking that was making her teeth chatter and her fingers thumbs, but to no avail; the combined onslaught of cold and nerves defeated her and she trembled like a leaf in the wind.
‘Come on.’ Sally picked up Hannah’s pile of clothes and dumped them in her arms, topping them with her hat. ‘Follow me.’
Hannah did as she was bidden; taking her clothes to the table, watching as a wardress bundled them up and put them on the shelf, answering like an automaton the questions she was asked. Name? Age? Offence? Sentence? Married? Next of kin? – Laboriously the woman entered the particulars in a huge book. Hannah’s bare feet had lost all feeling on the stone floor. The rough cloth of the chemise rubbed the tender skin of her injured shoulder and her ribs ached. Like an emotionless doll she submitted to the further humiliation of being searched, her arms held above her head whilst hard hands ran over her body, probing and squeezing, unnecessarily and salaciously rough. The wardress gave her a push. ‘Line up.’
She rejoined Sally, eyes cast down, not looking at the other girl. Sally slipped a hand in hers, her grip strong. ‘Nearly over.’
Touched by the attempt at encouragement, she forced a smile.
Sally grinned back. ‘That’s the ticket. Don’t let them get you down. That’s what they want.’
‘Stop nattering you two. By the left. Follow me.’ They followed Charity’s broad blue back through a door into a huge room in which stood twenty or so ancient iron baths, each in a small cubicle separated from its neighbour by a low partition.
‘Smith. Patten. Dingle. Peabody.’ The women were assigned each to a bath. Hannah pushed through the low, swinging door, stood staring, horror finally shaking her from the shocked stupor into which she had fallen. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said very firmly.
Sally’s head popped furtively over the partition. ‘What’s the matter?’
Hannah lifted a pointing finger that trembled noticeably. ‘Look at it! It’s filthy!’
The black iron bath had been given at some time a thin coating of white paint, most of which had worn off. The bath was half full of fresh and fairly warm water, through which could be seen the layers and rings of grime that were ground into what was left of the paint.
‘Get in!’ Sally hissed.
Hannah’s stomach stirred queasily, her face wrinkled in disgust. ‘I can’t.’ She looked at the other girl in true desperation. ‘Sally, I can’t!’
‘What can’t you do?’ The voice that came from behind her was dangerously conversational, the eyes beneath the dark blue bonnet hard. Sally’s head disappeared.
‘The bath’s dirty,’ Hannah said stiff-lipped.
‘Get in.’
Hannah shook her head.
The wardress very calmly unclipped a whistle that hung from her waist by a chain and put it to her lips. ‘I count to ten,’ she said equably, ‘then I blow this. You want to bath yourself –or you want half a dozen of us to do it for you? Please yourself. One – two – three—’
Hannah stared at her for one long, rebellious moment.
‘–four – five – six—’
Hannah closed her eyes. ‘All right.’
The woman stopped counting, lowered the whistle. But she did not move.
Hannah bit her lip.
‘In,’ her tormentor said simply. ‘I’m here to see it.’
Hannah turned her back, struggled the chemise over her head, stepped into the water with closed eyes.
‘You want me to scrub your back?’ The heavy-handed humour was entirely malicious. The woman, Hannah realized, was actually enjoying herself.
‘No, thank you.’
The vast blue bulk loomed above her. ‘No, thank you, ma’am.’
Hannah sighed. ‘No, thank you, ma’am.’
Alone she sat hunched in the water, avoiding the filthy sides. Though barely lukewarm the water was surprisingly comforting to her cold, tense body. She scrubbed quickly at arms and legs with the rough, strong-smelling soap. At least, slowly, the trembling was easing.
‘You all right?’ The whisper came from the top of the partition. Hannah turned her head. Sally’s concerned face peeped at her, broke into a small, droll smile at sight of her. ‘There, you see? I said it wouldn’t be so—’ she broke off. ‘Jesus, Hannah!’
‘What?’
‘Your shoulder! I didn’t realize how bad it was. What a bloody mess!’
Hannah hastily shook her hair back about her shoulders, reached for the rough towel that hung by the bath. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Nothing! It’s all the colours of the rainbow! And swollen to twice its size!’
‘Smith! You got time fer a nice little chat? Good – then yer can come out ’ere an’ chat with me. An’ earn yer bloody keep while you’re about it!’
‘Get something done about that!’ Sally hissed fiercely. Then, ‘Coming, ma’am,’ she sang out sweetly, her face ferocious, and disappeared.
Hannah clambered gingerly from the bath, dried herself as best as she could on the harsh towel, put on the skimpy chemise. An oppressive weariness had suddenly overcome her. Her eyelids drooped, her limbs were like lead. Listlessly she left the cubicle, joined the inevitable queue at the table, where Sally was helping a wardress dole out the clothes that would be the women’s uniform for the length of their sentences: rough and ill-made calico underclothing, thick stockings of heavy black wool with red stripes going around the legs and no means that Hannah could see of holding them up, and ill-fitting brown serge skirt and bodice, all marked with the conspicuous broad arrow that was the insignia of their imprisonment. But at least they were decent covering and it was with some relief that Hannah struggled into hers, battling with the manic arrangement of tapes and strings that held the shapeless garments together. With hasty hands she stuffed her hair into a too-small bonnet and tied the strings beneath her chin, then slipped her feet into awkward and badly fitting shoes that were at least three sizes too big for her narrow feet. Someone threw her a huge blue and white checked apron, which she tied about her waist.
‘Right. By the left. Follow me.’
They were led through more corridors to the strangest building Hannah had ever seen; a skeleton building, its metal bones raw in the cold light. Tier upon tier of landings rose above them. Weary and subdued they trod the metal stairs.
‘Second division prisoners fall out.’
Four women stepped from the line.
‘Peabody, four. McCann, seven. Patten, eleven. Ashe, twenty-three.’
Sally let go of Hannah’s hand with a last squeeze of the fingers and a quick, reassuring smile before she was marched off. Hannah with the other three followed the wardress along a landing that was lined with grim iron-studded doors. At the designated doors they stopped, the door was unlocked, the prisoner stepped inside and the door was locked behind her.
Cell eleven was Hannah’s.
The wardress jerked her head. ‘In you go, Eleven.’
Hannah stepped through the door that clanged shut behind her like the very knell of doom. Number Eleven. She was no longer Hannah Patten. No longer, even, Patten. She was Number Eleven, Landing C.
She stumbled to the wooden shelf that ran the length of the narrow, whitewashed, almost bare cell, sank down on it and buried her face in her hands. She was trembling again, violently now, and the pain in her shoulder and ribs was all but unbearable. Dry-eyed and utterly miserable she sat, unable to t
hink, unable to lift her head. Two weeks. Two long, awful weeks.
In that moment of near despair it might have been a lifetime.
II
To a young woman reared as gently as Hannah Patten had been, prison life was bound to come as a shock to test the fortitude of even her strong character. There was no indulgence and little compassion behind these bleak walls. A prisoner was a criminal and was treated as such. The regime was harsh in the extreme, the days unvarying and soul-crushing in their deadly, mindless boredom. She awoke each morning at dawn, in a cell roughly twelve feet long and perhaps seven wide, to the heavy tramp of feet and the strident ringing of bells. The floor was of stone, the tiny window, high up near the ceiling, small-paned and heavily barred, allowing the passage of neither light nor air and the sight only of a tiny square of grim brick wall. Beside the cell door, guarded by thick opaque glass, a gas jet flickered. Beneath that a small shelf and a tiny stool were the closest the cell could boast to a chair and table. Upon the shelf lay a bible, a hymn book and a bound copy of the prison rules. In the corner beneath the high window were two more shelves, the lower to accommodate her thin mattress and meagre bedding during the day, the upper containing the bare essentials of living – a wooden spoon, a tin mug, a piece of soap, a handleless hairbrush – all of which, on pain of punishment, must be kept in pre-ordained and never varying positions. On the floor beneath the shelves were a few simple utensils – a plate, a slop pail, a shallow basin and a small water-tin containing two or three pints of water. A tiny towel and a tinier tablecloth – more the size of a napkin – both much faded and worn, hung upon a nail. The plank bed would be folded up against the wall by day and pulled down each evening.
In the chill darkness of dawn in the unheated cell ablutions were speedy and – given at the most three pints of water – necessarily sketchy. In the distance the rattling and slamming of doors coming ever closer forced haste too into the chore of dressing in the heavy, awkward clothing, until the door flew open, crashing against the wall. ‘Empty your slops, Eleven.’ This unpleasant chore completed, there was the bedding to pack away for the day, each item to be folded precisely to formula and piled in unvarying order on an unvarying spot on the shelf. Then the tins used for meals must be cleaned with bath-brick and rags until they shone like silver. A pail of water delivered to the cell must then be used to scrub everything – floor, bed, stool and shelves – before breakfast consisting of a pint of thin gruel and a few ounces of bread could be eaten. After that, with fingers stiff and sore from cold water, she would start upon her day’s quota of sewing – sheets, at least fifteen a week, to be hemmed top and bottom, a seam in the centre that must be sewn with neatness and precision or the inspecting wardress, with no regard for protests or tears, would rip it open and throw it back to be sewn again.
At eight thirty she would join one of the long columns of women who were trudging down the staircases to the Chapel, this at least a small, welcome break, a chance to exchange a smile, perhaps even a few forbidden words, to see something approaching a friendly face; but all the time under a running fire of orders and criticisms, ‘Hold your head up, Twenty-Five!’ ‘Quiet, Number Two!’ ‘Pick up your feet, Fourteen! Don’t slouch!’ ‘Silence there!’
Back in the cell, sewing her sheets, the silence was the silence of utter loneliness, disorientating and depressing. And, steadily the pain in her shoulder and ribs worsened.
Dinner was at twelve – oatmeal porridge and bread, or perhaps suet pudding; two days a week potatoes and bread. From then onwards the only thing to break the mind-numbing monotony of lonely imprisonment was a trip to fetch some water some time between two and three in the afternoon, or, three days out of the seven, a precious exercise period spent shuffling in silent single file about the prison yard beneath a high square of sky where birds wheeled and called in a freedom that was almost too painful to watch. Supper, at five, was, like breakfast, gruel and bread. That finished there was the bed to make up before the gas jet died and the cell was given over to the silent shadows of twilight, the prisoner, locked in till morning, left to face the worst battle of the day: to try to sleep.
From the first awful night Hannah was utterly unable to sleep for two consecutive hours at a time. The bed was like rock, the pillow stone, the air foul. The meagre sheet and blanket was barely of a size to cover her, and certainly did nothing to protect her from the cold that crept from the white, sweating walls and the grey stone floor. Her damaged shoulder and ribs, bad enough during the day, at night became torture. Three mornings she lay, and then a fourth, watching a dawn that had taken agonizing hours to break smudge her tiny window with light. On the fifth morning, as she struggled to dress before the door was flung open, she wrenched the shoulder again. Gasping and greyfaced she leaned against the cold wall as the world tilted sickeningly about her. She heard, but her eyes unfocused by the unbearable pain did not see, the opening of the door.
‘Empty your slops, Eleven.’
Cold sweat trickled down her face and her back, crept at her armpits.
‘Your slops, Eleven! What’s the matter with you?’
She pushed herself away from the wall, noted with an almost comical amazement the way in which her knees buckled as with a painful and ungainly thump she collapsed upon the floor and lay as still as death.
* * *
On the sixth day of her confinement Sally, to her utter astonishment, received a visitor. Her cell, in the third division, was slightly smaller than Hannah’s, every bit as cold, damper and even worse lit. She was perched upon her stool, hunched over the detested sewing when the door opened.
‘Out yer come, Twenty-Three.’
Sally lifted a wary head, eyed the wardress she still thought of as Hope with suspicion. ‘Why?’
The woman grinned, showing a picturesque row of broken and blackened teeth. ‘You’ll find out. Just come along of me.’
‘But—’
‘Stop arguing, Twenty-Three, an’ jump to it!’
Resignedly Sally dumped her sheet on the shelf and stood up. Whatever this was about it was bound to be bad. Her mind scanned the last twenty-four hours anxiously. They surely couldn’t have discovered about the extra piece of bread she had filched whilst scrubbing the floor of the kitchen the day before yesterday? The deed was long done and the evidence gulped in a mouthful. She’d been reprimanded two days running for using the prisoners’ dumb alphabet to communicate with other inmates in the Chapel, but she’d paid a price for that already in losing her potato ration yesterday lunchtime. What else?
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see, Twenty-Three. Just shut yer mouth an’ do as yer told.’
She followed the woman along the corridor to a barred door with a grille in it. The woman knocked smartly. A face appeared.
‘Yes?’
‘Number Twenty-Three.’
The door opened. ‘Ten minutes,’ Hope said repressively, ‘then I come back for you.’
Puzzled Sally entered the room. It was bare but for a single wooden table. The inevitable tiny, barred, dirty window high up in the wall blocked out more light than it let in, and a gas jet flared by the door. A heavy-boned wardress – she whom Sally had christened Charity – stood guard. As Sally entered the room the tall, broad-shouldered figure who stood by the table turned.
Sally gaped.
‘Hello, Sally.’ Ben Patten’s craggy face was in shadow. ‘How are you?’
After a heartbeat’s stunned silence Sally to her horror found herself laughing, a small, nervous, embarrassing cough of laughter that sounded over-loud in the confines of the room. ‘Er – as well as can be expected is probably the best way to put it.’
He smiled a little, and stepped closer to her, to where the dim yellow gas light shone upon his square-jawed face. Though the long, straight mouth was still tilted in the small smile the dark grey eyes were sombre. Sally’s heart lurched. This was no social call.
‘What’s the matter,’ she asked bluntly,
‘what’s wrong?’
Ben readily took his cue from her and did not prevaricate. ‘It’s Hannah. I’ve paid her fine. I’m taking her home.’
Genuine relief lifted Sally’s heart. ‘That’s good. This is no place for her.’
‘It isn’t that. In fact she’s furious. I doubt if she’ll ever talk to me again.’ The wry smile flickered again and was gone. ‘It’s her injuries. I suspect she has a couple of cracked ribs. And in my honest opinion if she doesn’t get proper medical attention for her shoulder it could be permanently damaged. Principles or no principles she can’t stay here in that condition.’
Sally nodded. ‘Good for you. I bet she kicked up a stink, though?’
‘You could say that.’
Charity sniffed loudly, hawked, spat into a bucket in the corner. A shadow of distaste flickered in Ben’s face. There was a small, slightly awkward silence.
Then, ‘I want you to let me take you home too,’ Ben said flatly and quietly.
She was ready for him. ‘No.’ Her tone matched his exactly.
‘Sally – please. You’ve made your point. What good are you doing in here? A month in the third division is too much to ask of anyone. Everyone wants you out.’
‘No.’
‘For Hannah’s sake if not your own. It will break her heart to leave you in here.’
‘Hannah’s hurt.’ Sally’s lips twitched into a little, dry smile. ‘I’m not.’
Ben leaned upon the table, palms flat, head down for a moment so that she could not see his face. One of her ugly woollen stockings was sliding inexorably down her leg, gathering in lax wrinkles at her ankle. She contemplated the inelegance of lifting her skirts to pull it up, settled for trying to prevent its total collapse by trying to hitch it up with her other leg. Surprisingly the silence lengthened. With a sudden intuition she looked at his bowed head. The stocking settled in graceless discomfort around her ankle. ‘What else?’ she asked, quietly.
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 19