A Time for Courage

by Margaret Graham

  She turned as Hannah wrenched the can from her. The handle was cold and jagged and cut Hannah’s hand. The can was heavy and clanged against the park railing which divided the park from the church.

  ‘Go home, Esther. This is not a game. Frances has been hurt because she was mistaken for one of us. This has all gone too far. She has been right all along.’

  Esther pulled back at the can, her shadowed face contorted with effort and rage. ‘Hannah, you are the most miserable woman I’ve ever known. I’m having fun, I’m leading people and all you want to do is spoil it.’

  Hannah slapped her then, the noise flat in the night air, her hand stinging from the blow. Esther put her hand to her face. Her mouth opened but she was silent. Her necklace had broken and the amber beads lay around their feet.

  ‘Go home, Esther. This is not a game. I got you into this and I will get you out. This is not the way to win the vote.’

  ‘I want to do it.’ Esther was not talking quietly now. She slapped at Hannah and pulled at the can. ‘I want some fun.’ As they struggled they did not hear the running feet, it was only the whistle which pierced the fog and the sound of their harsh breathing. Esther spun round then, dropping the can so that the petrol spilt on Hannah’s skirt and shoes. The smell was acrid and sharp.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Esther whispered, her face wiped of its exhilaration, an animal fear taking its place. Hannah felt her own mouth run dry. Oh God, oh God, not this again. Please God, no. She turned, putting her hand to Esther’s mouth, looking down towards the alley which led eventually towards the street. She could see nothing but she could hear them. They would soon be here and the passage-way they now stood in led only to a brick wall. There was no way out for them.

  Hannah’s breathing had slowed as she fought to think, think hard and fast. She looked out over the park. The railings were broken but one of them could escape if the other lifted them over. She listened and the steps were nearer. She looked again at Esther. Harry loved her so and she had promised that she would look after her, hadn’t she? There was no other choice. She pushed her cousin to the railings.

  ‘Put your foot in my hand,’ she breathed. She clasped her hands together and as she took the weight of Esther’s body and lifted her it seemed as though her arms would be wrenched from her shoulders. The pain tore at her but she needed to lift her even higher because Esther could still not scale the railings. They could hear the police now in the alley. Soon they would turn into the passage-way.

  ‘Higher, for God’s sake, Hannah,’ Esther sobbed and Hannah made one last effort and at last Esther was nearly over.

  ‘Don’t run, move over to the tree and lie still until they’ve gone,’ Hannah breathed as Esther fell to the other side, ‘or they will catch you too.’

  Her hands were scored from the buckles which had caught as Esther had jumped to the other side and her arms were shaking as she sagged against the bars and saw her cousin disappear into the fog. She did not once look round and neither had she spoken, even to say goodbye. Would the police believe that she had not intended to fire the church? Hannah turned now as they entered the passage and could smell and feel the wet petrol on her clothes and her foot kicked against the can which lay on its side. She bent down and blew out the hurricane lamp. She preferred to wait in the dark.

  The sentence was six months in the third division and now Hannah filed with other prisoners through the blocks, hearing the echoes of their feet, but not their voices, for speaking was forbidden. She walked up the same flights of black iron steps as before, climbing from one landing to another and then another. She looked at the black netting strung between the landings of the first floor to prevent death by suicide and then back again to her own level, to the rows of doors. Inside these she knew would be the darkness again.

  As she entered the one which the wardress pointed to she saw that it could have been the same cell as last time. There were the same tins, the Bible, the bucket, the rolled mattress and the sheets which she had collected from the office along with the other prisoners. There was one other suffragette but she did not know her.

  ‘Courage, my friend,’ the other said as the door closed on Hannah.

  The clothes were as rough as last time and the wooden spoon smelt as it had done before. Hannah put it back in the tin mug and sat down on the bare wooden bunk feeling the ceiling and the walls pressing in on her already and the darkness sucking at her breath. She looked again at the spoon.

  ‘Well,’ she said quietly. ‘At least you and I need not bother to renew our acquaintance this time,’ and she smiled to think that already she was talking to herself.

  They brought her gruel and dark bread but she left it on the tray. Bedboards, hairbrush, shelves, bars, windows, sky. She listed them again and again, not looking at the food, not looking at the drink.

  The wardress unlocked the door. ‘Not you too, Number 9? Hunger striking is foolish and gives me more work,’ she said, her blue dress and bonnet as severe as her colourless face. She had a faint moustache, Hannah saw.

  ‘I’m not hungry, thank you,’ she said, not looking as the gruel was taken away.

  She slept that night between coarse sheets and in the morning rolled up her bedding and scrubbed the floor and looked and listed the items as before when the porridge and tea of breakfast filled the cell with their smell. She did not watch the vapour rise from the mug and bowl just listed the bowls and then the girls in her class and the shows that were on in London. Again and again. On the third day the wardress looked at the uneaten gruel. Hannah was sitting on the bunk; her head was aching, her tongue was swollen and dry and there was a foul taste in her mouth. She had scrubbed the floor this morning but it had taken two hours because the brush was so heavy and when she had stood the walls had rushed in on her and she had fallen to the floor. Her cheek was bruised.

  ‘If you do not eat tonight, you know what will happen, don’t you, Number 9?’

  Hannah did not nod, her head ached too much to move. The pain was bulging out of her skull and into the room. In and out, in and out and the wooden spoon was moving in its mug. She just sat, feeling the two letters she had received this morning. What did it matter what happened tomorrow, could it be worse than this hunger, this thirst, the pain in her head and eyes, the pain in her chest which had lodged when she had read the letter from Frances that had come this morning?

  She held it in her hand now, carefully folded into square upon square. She had done it so carefully, squeezing the folds tight and straight. They must be straight because Frances was a schoolteacher and she was angry at slovenly habits. She opened her hand when the wardress had gone and the thick squares were rounded into the shape of her palm. She must fold it again.

  Hannah bent her head but it seemed too full of pain and sank on to her chest. She forced herself to lift her head again and slowly her fingers opened the letter, smoothed it flat against her knees. She did not want to read it again but the words were written in strong black ink and as she smoothed and smoothed it she read again.

  Dear Hannah,

  I understand from Esther that you have been imprisoned for arson. I think then that you have taken the decision to end our friendship.

  Yours,

  Frances Fletcher.

  It seemed so strange, Hannah thought as she folded the paper, hiding the words behind folds too tight for them to escape, that she should lose her friend. So strange. Esther had written too. Her letter was in the bucket in the corner but Hannah remembered each word.

  Dear Hannah,

  Father is taking me away for the winter, he thinks I need to build myself up a little to cope with such a long engagement. I have not told him that you slapped me, he would never forgive you. I have not told him anything that happened. I think it best, don’t you, since I will not be returning to the suffragettes. It’s no fun any longer. My father wrote to Miss Fletcher explaining that I needed a long holiday in the sun. I hope she is better, I have not been in touch at all.

  I w
ill see you in the spring when perhaps Harry will be back too.

  Your cousin,

  Esther.

  She had felt anger before she had become so tired but she must not feel that for the woman her brother loved, so instead she had torn the letter into smaller and smaller pieces so that she could not picture her cousin, not at the moment anyway and Arthur was in Switzerland so she need not think of him either.

  In the morning she lay on her bunk. Her head hurt too much to move now, the door was too loud when the wardress opened it. Her keys jangled too close to Hannah’s head as she walked to the uneaten porridge and cold tea. She did not open her eyes as the woman stood over her.

  ‘You know what this means, Number 9? I shall be back later.’

  Was the sky blue, Hannah wondered, as blue as it had been in Cornwall? But no, it was winter, and there would be fog, and belching chimneys and stench from the slowly flowing river. She wished it was the spring and she could walk across the fields through the daffodils and the primroses. She could feel the spongy moss, Joe’s hard hand and she wanted to laugh but it did not squeeze past her swollen throat. He was there though, Joe was there, and they were walking with the wind in their hair and the kite was flying now, the string taut in her hand, jerking and pulling and soaring high.

  The scream pierced her mind and she opened her eyes but did not move her head. The scream came again and the rattle and jangle of trolley and keys.

  ‘No, no.’ It was the suffragette who had called to her as she entered her cell.

  Hannah clenched her hands to her ears and pulled back into her head, to the kite, to the tail which whipped in the wind but soon they came for her and the kite flew far away.

  There were four wardresses and the doctor and the cell was not big enough, they were too close to her. You should go away, she wanted to say. You are taking my air, my light, my life. They stripped off her bedding and pulled her into a chair which one of them had brought.

  ‘Eat this,’ the doctor said, showing her a light stew. She did not shake her head because it was about to burst.

  ‘No thank you,’ she said through parched lips and did not recognise the cracked husk as her own voice.

  Her head seemed too heavy for her neck and she wanted to lie down again but the doctor was holding two long tubes made from rubber joined by a glass junction and the wardress who gripped her head and smelt of sweat would not let her.

  She could not move her arms now, or her legs either because four other wardresses held them.

  ‘Open your mouth, Number 9,’ the doctor said. He did not look at her eyes, just her mouth. How strange to be just a number. My name is Hannah, she wanted to say, but did not for he would push that tube down if she did.

  ‘It is easier, less painful to use the mouth,’ the doctor told her. His breath smelt of cigarettes and his teeth were yellow and the pores were open on his skin. She shook her head and so he took a wooden gag and tried to force it in between her teeth but he could not and so then he took a steel one but it squeezed the skin between her teeth and his steel, his ice cold steel, and she tasted blood in her mouth and it was moist, so wonderfully moist. The tube was then forced down her nose, her throat and at last her stomach, burning and tearing into her, shutting off her breath. It reached her breastbone. She was suffocating but she could not say anything, only watch, as the doctor raised the funnel end of the tube and poured brown liquid into it. She could not breathe, only feel the tube, enormous in her and the liquid bulging into her stomach. A worse pain gripped at her throat, her stomach, her chest as the tube was withdrawn and she retched then, spraying the doctor and the wardresses with her vomit and she was glad.

  The next day a letter arrived from Maureen and Hannah was glad but her eyes ached too much to read it more than once.

  Dear Hannah,

  I’m sorry I didn’t help. I should have done. Be strong. I’ve left the militants. It’s all going nowhere.

  love,

  Maureen.

  They came as she folded it and the next day too but then she did not know any longer how many days passed, how many times this tube was thrust into her body by this hand which was large and had black hairs and tasted of nicotine. How often it was forced past swollen and cracked membranes.

  As she lay on her bunk on the day when the doctor had sworn at her she could see through swollen lids that her hands were thin with raised blue veins and she could smell lavender. She turned her head. Mother, she called, but made no sound, Mother. And her mother stayed with her, even when she had to be lifted into the chair because her legs were too weak to support her weight.

  Oh Mother, I miss you, she called as the tube was passed down each time and she no longer smelt the rubber or the nicotine but only the scent of lavender.

  Neither did she stay on her bunk for the long days and nights but sat by the window in the wicker chair and watched the pear tree with her mother. The sun was always flickering on the leaves and then Joe came and he flew his kite in the garden and there were no black patches on the grass only hundreds upon hundreds of daisies.

  They let her out three days before Christmas. They helped her down the steps and through the doors but each step made her want to lie down, each step jarred the pain inside her head, in her throat, in her stomach. They held her arms as she reached the small door on to the outside world.

  ‘But there is no one there for me,’ she said, for her mother had gone and Frances had gone and Harry and Esther and Arthur too and Joe was where the kite was flying.

  The wardress unlocked the door. ‘You will be re-arrested when you are strong enough,’ she said.

  Hannah climbed through the door. It was cold, so cold, and she could not stand alone but he was there. She should have known he would be there.

  She felt his hands take her arms and then lift her, holding her close so that she breathed only warm air which was trapped between them both.

  ‘Is Mother with you, Joe?’ she whispered.

  Joe nursed her in the small room with the solitary gas lamp. He carried her from the cab and up the stairs but she did not know this or that Maureen brought food back each day and so too did Ann.

  Joe sat each night at her bed and all through each day and she knew he was there as she played on the rope with Harry and sat by the window with her mother.

  She felt his arm around her as he spooned light broth through her lips which were still cracked and swollen and she felt it travel down the bruised gullet and into the stomach. He bathed and sponged her and she did not mind that he saw her body because he was her friend. At last the pain in her head drifted and died and as dawn came one morning she finally awoke.

  ‘It’s January,’ Joe drawled and laughed. ‘That’s one way of avoiding the Christmas festivities.’

  She looked at his face, the blond-red hair, the wide grin, the few freckles on his nose. Joe never changed and she was so glad. She looked about the room, it was different now with two of them here. It seemed lighter somehow, warmer. Joe had brought his tools and there was a smell of wood-shavings which were swept into a pile near his camp bed. Above the sink hung the marigold picture and she moved her hand and held his.

  ‘Joe, how can I …’

  ‘No more talking now,’ he said, smoothing her hair off her face, and she wanted to sleep again.

  They walked in the park the following week and she clung to his arm because it made her feel safer. They ate scones in a corner house but she could not tolerate the butter. He built up the fire each evening and they sat by it and talked.

  Joe wanted to write to Frances and tell her what had happened but Hannah felt too ashamed. He asked if she would like Arthur to be told but she told him that he was in Switzerland and what was the point?

  The police came for her the following week. She heard them climbing the stairs and she clung to Joe, just for a moment, before they knocked. He was so strong, so dear, and she did not want to be alone again and she was not sure that her mother would come back when the tubes w
ere brought.

  His arms were tight around her and he breathed in her hair. ‘Just serve your sentence, my Cornish girl, don’t go through all this again.’ He held her away and his eyes were as full of tears as hers were. There was the same fear in them that she knew was in her own and then his head came down towards her lips and she wanted to feel their softness and their warmth, to taste his breath, and then they knocked and she spun round. She did not want them in here, in the room which she and Joe had shared.

  ‘I must go,’ she said and knew that she must starve again because this was the only way she could leave the suffragettes. She must suffer as others had if she was to live with herself and her breach of loyalty.

  It was March before she was released again and this time Joe took her home to Cornwall because they would not be re-arresting her. The prison doctor said she was too weak, too ill to withstand any further forcible feeding or starvation.

  She did not remember anything of the journey but as she lay in the bed Eliza came and she and Joe nursed her. Sometimes she knew this but the pain was so great and the fever climbed so high that one night she could bear it no more. Joe sat by the bed and she felt his hand on hers and she left her mother for a moment in the garden and turned to him. Her head was heavy and she wanted to close her eyes again but her friend was here and she wanted to say goodbye.

  ‘Joe,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going now with my mother. I’m so tired.’

  He did not stir, his head was on his chest, his eyes were asleep, his blond moustache was barely visible in the moonlight. She wanted to bring his hand to her lips and kiss it but she could not even lift her own and so she looked at him once more and then closed her eyes, looking for her mother again.

  She was there, over by the tree where the rope was swinging in the breeze. Her mother looked young again, her hair shining and loose. She looked at Hannah and smiled, then began to walk away. Mother, Hannah called, wait for me. I’m coming and she ran, she could feel the air pumping in and out of her chest and the pain was leaving and the tiredness. She was closer now but her mother was still walking. Mother, she called, wait for me. Her hand was stretching out and now her mother turned. Go back, Hannah, go back. I love you but go back. She walked down into the fernery and Hannah was left and the pain came back and she groaned and wept. Joe woke and saw the tears running from her eyes on to the pillow and he called Eliza though it was only three in the morning. Together they sponged her down, held a hand and wondered if they dare hope that somehow she would live. She did.