by Sarah Waters
‘Haven’t I said all my prayers, at chapel? And learned my lessons, for the school-mistresses? And taken my soup? And kept my cell neat?’
Miss Brewer smiled, and shook her head. She said, it was because Dawes had been good that they were moving her. Didn’t Dawes want that—to be rewarded? Her voice grew gentle. She said that Dawes was only startled. She said she knew that it was hard for the women at Millbank to understand that there were other, kinder places in the world.
She took a step towards the gate. ‘I shall leave you with Miss Prior now,’ she said, ‘and let her help you grow used to the idea.’ She said that Miss Haxby would come later, to tell Selina more.
Perhaps she waited for a reply and, hearing none, looked puzzled again. I am not sure. I know she turned to the gate—perhaps she put her hand to it, I cannot say. I saw Selina move—she moved so sharply, I thought she had swooned, and I took a step to catch her. But she had not swooned. She had darted for the shelf behind the table, she had reached for something that lay upon it. There was a clatter, as her tin mug and her spoon and book went tumbling—at that, of course, Miss Brewer heard, and turned. Then her face gave a twist. Selina had lifted her arm, and now swung it; and what she held in her hand was her wooden trencher. Miss Brewer raised her own arm, but not quickly enough. The trencher struck her—edge-on, I think, upon the eyes, for she put her fingers to them, and then her arms, to protect her face from further blows.
Then she fell, and lay dazed and sprawled and wretched, her skirts kicked high and showing her coarse wool stockings, her garters, the pink flesh of her thighs.
It happened more swiftly than it has taken me to write it; and it happened more quietly than I could have thought possible, the only sounds after the clatter of the mug and spoon being the terrible crack of the trencher and then, Miss Brewer’s breath coming in a rush out of her bosom, the scraping of the buckle of her bag against the wall. I had placed my hands upon my face. I think I said, ‘My God’—I felt the words upon my fingers—and I made to move, at last, to Miss Brewer’s side. Then I saw the trencher still gripped tight in Selina’s hand. I saw her face, that was white and sweating and strange.
And I thought—for a moment I thought—I remembered the girl, Miss Silvester, who was hurt—I thought: You did strike her! And I am shut in a cell with you! And I stepped back, in horror, and placed my hands upon the chair.
And then she dropped the trencher and sagged against the folded hammock, and I saw that she was trembling worse than I.
Miss Brewer began to murmur and to clutch about her at the wall and table, and then I did go to her, and kneel and place my shaking hands upon her head. I said, ‘Lie still. Lie still, Miss Brewer’—she had begun to weep. And then I called into the passage-way: ‘Mrs Jelf! Oh, Mrs Jelf, you must come quickly!’
She came at once, came running up the ward, then grasped the bars of the gate to steady herself. And when she saw, she gave a cry. I said, ‘Miss Brewer is hurt’—then, in a lower voice: ‘She has been struck, in the face.’ Mrs Jelf grew white, looked wildly at Selina, then stood for a moment with her hand upon her heart; then she pushed at the gate. It caught on Miss Brewer’s skirts and legs: we spent a miserable moment, pulling at her gown, turning her limbs—Selina still and mute and trembling all the while, and watching us. Miss Brewer’s eyes had begun to swell and close, and there were bruises already starting out against the pallor of her cheek and brow; her gown and bonnet were thick with lime, from the cell wall. Mrs Jelf said, ‘You must help me bring her to my room, Miss Prior, between the wards. Then one of us must go for the surgeon, and—and for Miss Ridley.’ Here she held my gaze for a second, then looked again towards Selina. She had now drawn her knees against her chest, and placed her arms about them, and lowered her head. The crooked star upon her sleeve showed very bright in the shadows. It seemed terrible, suddenly, to hasten from her, shuddering—to leave her trembling, with no word of comfort, knowing whose hands would be upon her next. I said, ‘Selina’—not caring if the matron heard me—and she moved her head. Her gaze was bleak, and seemed unfocused: I couldn’t tell if it was turned on me, on Mrs Jelf, or on the bruised and weeping girl who sagged between us—I think, upon myself. But she said nothing, and at last the matron drew me from her. She fastened the gate, then hesitated, then reached for the second, wooden door and bolted it closed.
We made the journey to the matron’s chamber, then—what a journey it was! For the women had heard my shout, the matron’s cry, Miss Brewer’s weeping, and they were at their gates, their faces pressed to the bars, their eyes upon us as we made our graceless, halting passage. One called, oh, who had hurt Miss Brewer? and was answered: ‘Dawes! Selina Dawes has busted up her cell! Selina Dawes has cracked Miss Brewer in the face!’ Selina Dawes! The name was passed from woman to woman, cell to cell, as if upon a ripple of filthy water. Mrs Jelf cried out that they must be quiet; but her cry was querulous and the shouts went on. And at length one voice broke free of all the others—not to tell or wonder, this time, but to laugh: ‘Selina Dawes broke out at last! Selina Dawes, for the jacket and the darks!’
I said, ‘Oh, God! will they never be silent?’ I thought they might drive her to madness. But as I thought it there came the slam of a gate, and another cry I couldn’t catch; and the voices faded at once—it was Miss Ridley and Mrs Pretty, the shouting had brought them from the ward below. We had reached the matron’s chamber. Mrs Jelf unlocked the door, led Miss Brewer to a chair, and dampened a handkerchief for her to place against her eyes. I said quickly, ‘Will they really take Selina to the darks?’—‘Yes,’ she answered, in the same low tone. Then she bent again to Miss Brewer. By the time Miss Ridley had arrived to say, ‘Well, Mrs Jelf, Miss Prior, what is this sorry business?’, her hand was steady, her face quite smooth.
‘Selina Dawes,’ she said, ‘has struck Miss Brewer with her trencher.’
Miss Ridley drew in her head, then moved to Miss Brewer to ask, How was she hurt? Miss Brewer said, ‘I cannot see.’—Mrs Pretty heard that, and came nearer for a better view. Miss Ridley removed the handkerchief. ‘Your eyes have swollen shut,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you are hurt worse than that. But Mrs Jelf shall run and fetch the surgeon’—Mrs Jelf went, at once. Miss Ridley replaced the cloth, and kept one hand upon it; the other she placed upon Miss Brewer’s neck. She did not look at me, but turned to Mrs Pretty. ‘Dawes,’ she said. And, as the matron moved off into the passage, she added: ‘Call me, if she kicks.’
I could only stand, then, and listen. I heard Mrs Pretty’s rapid, heavy tread upon the sanded flags, then the sliding of the bolt on the wooden door at Selina’s cell, the rattle of the key in the gate. I heard a murmur; I may have heard a cry. This was followed by a silence, then by the quick and heavy tread again with, less distinctly, the sound of lighter feet, that stumbled or were dragged. Then came the slam of a further door. After that, there was nothing.
I felt Miss Ridley’s eyes upon me. She said, ‘You were with the prisoner, when the trouble started?’ I nodded. She asked me, what had provoked it?—I said, I was not sure. ‘Why,’ she asked then, ‘did she hurt Miss Brewer, and not you?’ I said again, I wasn’t sure, did not know why she had hurt anyone. I said, ‘Miss Brewer came with news.’—‘And it was the news that set her off?’—‘Yes.’
‘What news was this, Miss Brewer?’
‘She is to be moved,’ said Miss Brewer miserably. She put a hand upon the table at her side: there was a deck of playing-cards upon it, set out by Mrs Jelf for a game of Patience, and now the deck grew muddled. ‘She is to be moved, to the gaol at Fulham.’
Miss Ridley gave a snort. ‘Was to be moved,’ she said, with a bitter satisfaction.
Then her face gave a twitch—as the face of a clock will sometimes twitch, with the tumbling of the cogs and gears behind it—and her eyes came back to mine.
And then I guessed what she guessed, and then I thought: My God.
I turned my back to her. She said nothing more, and aft
er another minute Mrs Jelf returned, with the prison surgeon. He saw me and bowed, then took Miss Ridley’s place at Miss Brewer’s side, tut-tutting at what he saw behind the handkerchief, producing a powder for Mrs Jelf to mix with water in a glass. I knew the smell of it. I stood and watched Miss Brewer sipping at it, and once, when she spilled a little, I felt myself twitch with the impulse to step and catch the fluid she had wasted.
‘You will be bruised,’ the surgeon told her. But he said the bruises would fade: she was lucky the blow had not caught the nose or the bone of the cheek. When he had bound her eyes, he turned to me. ‘You saw it all?’ he said. ‘The prisoner did not strike at you?’ I said I was quite unhurt. He replied that he doubted that: that this was a bad business for a lady to be mixed up in. He advised me to send for my maid and have her drive home with me at once; and when Miss Ridley protested that I had not yet given my account of the incident to Miss Haxby, he answered that he did not think Miss Haxby would mind the delay, ‘in Miss Prior’s case’. This was the man, I recollect now, who refused poor Ellen Power her bed in the infirmary. I didn’t think of that then, however. I was only grateful to him, for to have had to suffer Miss Haxby’s questions and surmises at that moment would, I think, have killed me. I walked with him across the ward and we passed Selina’s cell, and I slowed my step and shuddered to see the shrieking, small disorder of it—the doors thrown wide, the trencher, mug and spoon upon the floor, the hammock disarranged out of its Millbank folds, the book—The Prisoner’s Companion—ripped, and lime trodden into its bindings. I looked, and the surgeon’s eyes followed mine, and he shook his head.
‘A quiet girl, from all I hear,’ he said. ‘But there, the quietest bitch will turn sometimes, upon its mistress.’
He had told me to send for a servant and take a cab; I did not think that I could bear the closeness of it, imagining Selina in her own closer place. I walked home, quickly, through the darkness, without a thought for my own safety. Only at the end of Tite Street did I slow my step, to turn my face into the breeze, to cool it. Mother might ask, How had my visit gone? and I knew I must be steady with my answer. I couldn’t say, ‘A girl broke out to-day, Mother, and struck a matron. A girl went wild, and caused a stir.’ I couldn’t have said such a thing, to her. Not just because she must still think the women meek, and safe, and sorry—not just because of that. But because I couldn’t have said it without weeping or shuddering, or crying out the truth—
That Selina Dawes had struck a matron upon the eyes; had made them thrust her, in a jacket, into a darkened cell, because she could not bear to go from Millbank, and from me.
And so I meant to be calm, and say nothing, and come quietly to my room. I meant to say I was unwell, and they must only let me sleep. But when Ellis opened the door to me, I saw her look; and when she moved to let me pass her I saw, in the dining-room, the table, that was filled with flowers and candles and china plates. Then Mother came to the stairs, white-faced with worry and vexation: ‘Oh! How dare you be so thoughtless! How can you thwart and unsettle me so!’
It was our first supper-party since Prissy’s wedding, and the guests were due, and I had forgotten it. She came to me and lifted her hand—I thought she meant to strike me, and I flinched.
But she did not strike me. She pulled the coat from me, then put her fingers to my collar. ‘Take the gown from her here, Ellis!’ she cried. ‘We cannot have the filth carried upstairs, trodden into the carpets.’ I saw then that I was streaked with lime, that must have come upon me as I helped Miss Brewer. I stood, bewildered, while Mother caught at one of my sleeves, and Ellis seized the other. They pulled the bodice from me, and I stumbled out of the skirts; then they took my hat, and my gloves, and then my shoes, which were thick with street-dirt. Then Ellis bore the clothes away, and Mother caught me by my pimpling arm and drew me into the dining-room and closed the door.
I said, as I had planned, that I was not quite well; but when she heard me say it she gave a bitter laugh. ‘Not well?’ she said. ‘No, no, Margaret. You keep that card to play as you choose. You are ill when it suits.’
‘I am ill now,’ I said, ‘and you are making me iller—’
‘You are well enough, I think, for the women of Millbank!’ I put a hand to my head. She hit it aside. ‘You are selfish,’ she said, ‘and wilful. I won’t have it.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please. If I might only go to my own room and lie upon my bed—’
She said I must go to my room and dress—I must dress myself, since the girls were too busy to help me. I said I could not, was too distracted—had had to endure a most miserable scene, on the wards of the prison.
‘Your place is here!’ she answered, ‘—not at the prison. And it is time you showed that you know it. Now Priscilla is married, you must take up your proper duties in the house. Your place is here, your place is here. You shall be here, beside your mother, to greet our guests when they arrive . . .’
So she went on. I said she would have Stephen, Helen—that made her voice grow even sharper. No! She could not bear it! She could not bear to have our friends believe me weak, or eccentric—she almost spat the word at me. ‘You are not Mrs Browning, Margaret—as much as you would like to be. You are not, in fact, Mrs Anybody. You are only Miss Prior. And your place—how often must I say it?—your place is here, at your mother’s side.’
My head, which had begun to ache at Millbank, now felt as though it might split in two. But when I told her that she said only, waving her hand, that I must take a dose of chloral. She had not the time to fetch it for me, I must take it myself.—And she told me where she keeps it. She has it in the drawer inside her bureau.
I came here then. I passed Vigers in the hall, and turned my face from her, to see her gazing in amazement at my bare arms, my petticoats and stockings. I found my gown spread out upon the bed, and the brooch that I must pin to it; and even as I stood fumbling with the fastenings I heard the first of the carriages drawing up outside—it was a cab, with Stephen and Helen in it. I was clumsy, dressing without Ellis: a piece of wire worked loose at the waist of my gown and I could not see how it might be smoothed. I could not see anything, above the beating in my head. I brushed the lime from my hair, and the brush seemed made of needles. I saw my face in the glass, and my eyes were dark as bruises, the bones at my throat standing out like wires. I heard Stephen’s voice, two floors below, and when I was sure the drawing-room door was closed, I went down to Mother’s room and found the chloral. I took twenty scruples of it—then, when I had sat, waiting for the tug of it and feeling nothing, I took another ten.
Then I felt my blood begin to treacle and the flesh upon my face seem to grow thick, and the pain behind my brow grew less, and I knew the medicine was working. I put the chloral back inside the drawer, very neatly, just as Mother would like. Then I went downstairs to stand beside her and smile at the guests. She looked at me once when I appeared, to see that I was tidy; after that, she didn’t look at me again. Helen, however, came to kiss me. ‘You have been arguing, I know,’ she whispered. I said, ‘Oh Helen, how I wish Priscilla had not gone!’ Then I began to fear that she would smell the medicine on my mouth. I took a glass of wine from Vigers’ tray, to take the scent away.
Vigers looked at me, as I did that, and said quietly, ‘The pins of your hair, miss, are working loose.’ She held her tray against her hip a moment, and put her hand to my head—and it seemed the kindest gesture, suddenly, that anyone had ever shown me, anyone at all.
Then Ellis struck the dinner-bell. Stephen took Mother, and Helen went with Mr Wallace. I was taken down by Miss Palmer’s beau, Mr Dance. Mr Dance has whiskers, and a very broad brow. I said—but I remember the words now as if another woman said them—I said, ‘Mr Dance, your face is very curious! My father used to draw faces like yours for me, when I was a girl. When the paper is turned upside-down there is another face there. Stephen, do you remember those drawings?’ Mr Dance laughed. Helen gave me a puzzled look. I said, ‘You must stand
on your head, Mr Dance, and let us see the other face that you have hidden there!’
Mr Dance laughed again. I remember him laughing very hard, indeed, all through the dinner, until at last the laughter made me tired, and I put my fingers to my eyes. Mrs Wallace said then, ‘Margaret is weary to-night. Are you weary, Margaret? You have been too attentive to those women of yours.’ I opened my eyes, and the lights upon the table seemed very bright. Mr Dance asked, What women were those, Miss Prior? and Mrs Wallace answered for me, that I went visiting at Millbank Prison and had made friends with all the women. Mr Dance wiped his mouth and said, How curious. I felt the wire in my gown again, it pricked me worse than ever. ‘From all that Margaret tells us,’ I heard Mrs Wallace say, ‘the habits there are very hard. But the women are used, of course, to vicious living.’ I gazed at her, and then at Mr Dance. ‘And Miss Prior goes,’ he asked, ‘to study them? To tutor them?’—‘To comfort and inspire them,’ said Mrs Wallace. ‘To offer them her guidance, as a lady.’—‘Ah, as a lady . . .’
Now I laughed, and Mr Dance turned his head to me and blinked. He said, ‘You must I suppose have seen many very wretched scenes there.’
I remember now looking at his plate, seeing the biscuit that was on it, the piece of blue-veined cheese, the ivory-handled knife with the curl of butter upon its blade, that was beaded with water, as if sweating. I said slowly that, yes, I had seen wretched things there. I said I had seen women unable to speak, because the matrons kept them silent. I had seen women harm themselves, for the variety of it. I had seen women driven mad. There was a woman dying there, I said, because she was kept so cold and badly fed. There was another who had put out her own eye—
Mr Dance had taken up the ivory-handled knife; now he set it down again. Miss Palmer gave a cry. Mother said, ‘Margaret!’ and I saw Helen glance at Stephen. But the words came from me, I seemed to feel the shape and taste of them as they left my mouth. I might have sat there and been sick upon the table—they could not have silenced me.
