Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  She had opened her eyes, and to her horror, Sarah and Jonathan had been staring down at her.

  Sarah asked: ‘Debbie? What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just reciting a poem I learnt at school. It’s nothing really.’ She felt her cheeks flush hot, but luckily Sarah was too full of her own news to be very interested.

  ‘How strange. Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ If Deborah hadn’t been so embarrassed she would have noticed that her sister, too, was blushing. She dropped the horsehair surreptitiously on the grass.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask why we’ve been so long? Weren’t you worried?’

  ‘No. Should I have been?’ Deborah’s daydream had been so intense, she had no idea how long the others had been gone.

  Jonathan smiled — that radiant smile he had in those days which somehow warmed her all through. ‘Debbie was too engrossed in her poetry to think about us, my dear,’ he said. ‘But I think . . .’

  ‘No, let me tell her, Jonathan,’ Sarah said, in her impulsive, forceful way. ‘She’s my little sister, not yours. What he is trying to tell you, Deborah dear, is that Jonathan and I are going to get married. And we would like you to be our bridesmaid.’

  Deborah could never remember the rest of that afternoon. She knew that she had burst into tears, and that Sarah had looked shocked and a little angry, but whether she had recovered herself and congratulated them, she was not sure. Presumably she had, since her next memory was of following Sarah down the aisle. She had been holding Sarah’s train, and feeling utterly hollow and desolate inside. When Jonathan had put the ring on Sarah’s finger, Deborah drove her nails into the skin of her own ring finger so hard that the marks were still there the next day.

  But that was all the fantasy of a girl of seventeen. Two years later, Deborah had a husband of her own, a handsome army officer whom she had known since she was twelve — just the kind of man Jonathan liked least. Jonathan had become a successful barrister and a Liberal Member of Parliament. The year after that Sarah had her first miscarriage, and Deborah gave birth to a son, in India. Even when she returned home, they lived on opposite sides of the Irish Sea, meeting once or twice a year at most. They were responsible married people.

  So responsible that Sarah had just slashed a picture in the National Gallery, and Deborah was pregnant by an Irish trade union leader. And Jonathan sat up late at night in his house in Belgravia, writing to Deborah because he could not talk to his wife. At a time like this, Deborah thought — he might even be writing to me now!

  She knew she would have to go and see Sarah, but somehow, the thought failed to touch her. Most likely she would receive a defiant lecture, find her offer of help despised. Instead, Deborah felt an intense yearning to talk to Jonathan. Part of it was protective, maternal almost — a desire to help him in his loneliness. But also it was a desire for understanding, comfort for herself. She wondered if she would have the courage to tell him about Rankin, and what he would say, if she did.

  She smiled, and smoothed the letter gently against her dress, as though it were a child.

  As for Charles, well, Jonathan is right. No doubt he will behave very well if he is arrested or has to fight. Young Tom will believe his father is a hero. And if anything happens to Charles he will have brought it on himself.

  As, no doubt, Charles would say about me.

  Deborah shivered suddenly, put the letter back in its envelope, and stood up to get ready for bed.

  PART THREE

  London

  11

  ‘LONDON EUSTON!’

  The train door slammed behind Deborah and she stood in a vast, grimy cathedral with iron vaults overhead, and pigeons flying through gouts of escaping steam. The shouts and whistles of guards and porters filled the air. A donkey, blinkered, pulled a line of Royal Mail trolleys along the platform.

  ‘Carry your bags, lady?’

  ‘Thank you, yes. These — and this one here.’ An old man, bent, fifty, white moustache and broken veins all down his face, hurrying away at surprising speed with her bags, his gammy right leg swaying to the side and back again as he pushed the trolley. Gracious — he’d almost gone! Quickly, she wormed her way between a flag-waving guard and a bowler-hatted clerk, and saw him pushing through a crowd outside W.H. Smith’s newspaper stall. People — so many people everywhere! She bumped into a portly man in a tweed coat and top-hat, dodged some boys larking by the hot-chestnut stand, and emerged, breathless, hat slightly awry, at the taxi rank.

  ‘Belgrave Square, please.’

  London overwhelmed her. After Glenfee it was so big, so crowded, so full of energy. She had always wondered how Sarah could bear to live here, but perhaps it suited her aggression, her impulsiveness. Deborah felt that if she stood still or hesitated she would be ignored, knocked over, pushed to one side. She felt at first panic, then exhilaration. It was a place where she didn’t matter. Where she could do what she liked with no one to watch or complain.

  Where she might solve the problem of her baby. Or find Rankin, and disappear. But then she would lose Tom for certain. Or was there a way around that, too?

  Oh, there has to be!

  But first, she had come to help her sister. And her brother-in-law too, if he needed it.

  In the taxi she gazed curiously out at the fashions. Hats, she saw, were larger than ever; even quite ordinary-looking girls sported hats wide as bicycle wheels, laden with flowers and fruit and feathers. Several others, in Oxford Street especially, carried parasols. Nearly all the dresses she saw were gathered in with a belt or a sash at the waist, and those she liked most descended in several layers of frilly taffeta to the ankle. One or two women still wore the hobble skirt, tied with a bow just below the knee, but most, she was glad to see, had abandoned it. She had tried one once but thought it absurd. It was impossible to walk in it; she nearly fell over.

  So much attention we women pay to the surface of things, she thought, while so much horror goes on underneath. And yet, if I had time, I would like to come back here and buy something for myself. Even bring Sarah with me. She might like that. It would take her mind off her militant protests, make her think of pleasing Jonathan, for a change.

  But that’s foolish. She won’t be out for six months, unless she starves herself out, and then she’ll be too weak to do anything except lie in bed for days. As for me, in a few months no fashionable clothes will fit me, whatever I buy.

  Sarah’s house was a four-storey terrace in a square in Belgravia. It was in a prosperous area; Jonathan was a successful barrister as well as a Liberal MP. As Deborah’s taxi drew up she saw a large, shiny limousine parked outside. Several other cars were parked haphazardly along the street, and a horsedrawn milkfloat was trying to edge past. The milkman was engaged in heated debate with the chauffeur of the limousine. Several men in cloth caps stood around with notebooks in their hands, watching the door.

  Deborah got out and persuaded the taxi-driver to carry her bags to the foot of the steps. As she was paying him, the front door opened and Jonathan came out.

  She had not seen him for nearly a year, but he was little changed. Pale, perhaps, his face thinner under the beard, but she would have known him anywhere. Not as tall or as strong as Rankin but still a handsome man. To her he seemed scarcely to have changed from the smiling young man for whom she’d opened her mother’s front door, all those years ago.

  He did not notice her at first; and that was normal, too. He was as tall and wiry as ever; his face slightly more lined, perhaps, but not a trace of grey in the short black beard. He seemed to have cut himself, shaving perhaps — there was a small white plaster on one cheek. His eyes, even at this distance, were bright, intense. He wore a frock coat, pinstripe trousers, and had a top hat in his hand; and he was clearly in a hurry. He saw the reporters waiting at the foot of the steps, and stepped down quickly towards his chauffeur.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Becket, could you say a few words?’

  ‘Have you heard anything
from your wife, sir?’

  ‘Is it true that you are going to resign from Parliament?’

  He reached the car door and turned, his hand held up firmly. She remembered he had worn a wedding ring once. No longer. It chafed his skin, he had said.

  ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. I have nothing to say — no comment whatsoever. I am going to make a statement in the House; you can come and listen to me there.’

  ‘Hello, Jonathan.’

  ‘What?’ He was within a yard of her now and had still noticed nothing. She had spoken so quietly, she thought her voice might have gone unheard. He glanced at her, almost irritably she thought — a strange woman among the reporters. Perhaps she shouldn’t have come.

  Then he recognised her and the smile transformed him. It was all right, he was pleased to see her. It was just as she remembered it. Radiant, warming her with its power. But she saw, too, the lines of strain around the eyes, the pallor under the skin.

  ‘Deborah! Great Scot! How did you get here?’

  ‘By train, of course, Johnny. How do you think?’

  He bent forward and kissed her, gently, on the cheek. His beard brushed against her softly, like a wisp of horsehair. As though the reporters, the men around them, did not exist. A family reunion. His sister-in-law, come up to town.

  ‘But why are you here now, of all times? Do you know what’s happened? Sarah . . .’

  ‘Is in prison again. I know. Jonathan, I have come to be of help, if I can.’

  He took her hand in his and held her fingers lightly, without pressure. If only Charles could behave like this, she thought. But then, Jonathan had always had good manners, even as a young man.

  ‘Thank you, Deborah, that’s kind. How very like you. But my dear, you must be tired. And I am off to speak in the House, about this wretched business.’

  ‘About Sarah, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’ She saw how drawn he looked, anxious, now that the smile had gone. ‘Some members will laugh, no doubt, but mostly they will pity me, and that is the worst. But no matter, she has forced me into it. Some things have to be said. If you go inside, my butler Reeves will take care of you.’

  Deborah looked at the house, confused. She hadn’t come all this way to hide in there, alone.

  ‘No, let me come with you! Please, Jonathan — I am not tired and I would like to hear what you say!’

  He was pleased, she could tell that. He thought for a moment, then stood back and handed her into the car. ‘Yes, why not? I suppose I can get you into the Ladies’ Gallery. Come, and welcome.’

  It was a nightmare. No one could survive six months of this, Sarah thought. No one.

  Lots of women have.

  It was true. She remembered reading how Sylvia Pankhurst had been force-fed for five months, how dozens of other nameless women had endured it, how Emily Davison had thrown herself over the top balcony of a prison walkway in protest against forced feeding.

  Emily Davison. She had been killed later, catching hold of the King’s horse in the Derby, in protest against the government’s treatment of Mrs Pankhurst. She hadn’t just endured, she’d died for the cause.

  Up till now, Sarah knew, Mrs Pankhurst herself had not been forcibly fed. She had been tortured by the government’s alternative, the Cat and Mouse Act. Sarah had thought that was what would happen to her, too, but perhaps government policy had changed. Perhaps Mrs Pankhurst was being forcibly fed here now, in the same prison as her.

  Sarah had no way of knowing.

  Sarah only knew that she had been force fed again, twice, and she had never felt so dirty or frightened or helpless in her life.

  She had no way out. Only rarely was she allowed out of the cell, and she met no one. Her only exercise was to hobble from window to door, and back again. Her hands shook, her throat was scraped raw by the tube, her teeth battered by the gag, her dress stained by vomit.

  And this could go on for six months.

  She wondered if anyone outside knew, if even Jonathan knew what was happening to her. Probably not. Probably he was still blithely going to visit his whore. Could a man do that? Life is so unfair, she thought, it is a cruel joke. Not only is society organised to serve the needs of men, they are also born with a greater need for sex than us, and a lesser need for love. Perhaps they can divorce the two. How could God make a world like that?

  Is that what my husband is really like?

  He wasn’t once. People said we were a handsome couple. Women admired him, not just because of his appearance but because he was kind, sympathetic, understanding. He used to listen to people, make them laugh. I remember once Alice Watson said to me: you are a lucky woman, Mrs Becket, to have a husband like that, so distinguished and good-mannered. Who even votes for women’s suffrage in Parliament. There are so many ladies whose husbands let them down and I have seen them destroyed by it . . .

  And then I get a letter from a prostitute telling me to keep suffragetes away from Dr Armstrong because my husband gets the same treatment as other men and I see him going into Armstrong’s house and not come out. So I have the information to destroy this foul pimp and I daren’t use it because it would destroy my fine distinguished well-mannered husband at the same time . . .

  A terrible thought struck Sarah, so sudden and painful that she flushed, and got up to walk up and down the tiny cell to calm herself. What if Mrs Watson and the other women in the movement knew all about Jonathan? If they knew, but didn’t tell me, to spare my feelings because I am his wife?

  If that was true, she thought, then I would be an embarrassment to the whole movement. Perhaps they want to expose this Dr Armstrong and his wretched prostitution racket but are holding back because my husband is one of his customers. So they have done nothing about it and the evil goes on.

  Would they do that?

  They might. Mrs Watson is a kind sensitive woman and so are most of the others. They might easily hold back from something that might hurt me because they thought I was still weak from last time in prison, and they thought it might break my heart.

  Oh God! Perhaps I have embarrassed them all.

  The doctor and the wardresses came once a day with their trolley. Each time they asked her, before they began, if she would agree to eat. Each time she refused, as vehemently as she could. Today, for the first time, she experienced the torture as a punishment, as though it were in some way deserved for her own foolishness.

  And yet it is Jonathan who is at fault, she thought later, as she lay sore and trembling on her vomit-stained bed. Why should I blame myself? That is just another wretched male trick. I shouldn’t have just scratched him in those police cells, I should really have torn his eyes out.

  Those pale blue eyes I used to love. I couldn’t do that, I’m not a monster. He is. I wish he loved me. Why can’t I think clearly any more?

  If only I knew someone, she thought. If only I had a friend. Someone to talk to, who could help me get my thoughts in order. Once she had looked out of the window and seen other prisoners, subdued, walking in a ring. At least, she assumed that was what it was. The exercise yard was blocked from her view by a wing of the prison that jutted out, and she could only see a couple of square yards of gravel. Every few seconds a different woman in a grey, arrow-striped prison dress had shuffled into view, head bowed, hands clasped in front of her, and then disappeared. None had looked up. Sarah had been taken out for exercise like that once or twice in her first prison sentence, before she had begun her hunger strike. Women walked in a ring for the allotted time, in silence. No one was allowed to speak or look at the others.

  Nonetheless, it was in the open air. This time, because Sarah refused to eat, she was denied even that.

  ‘Slops out, now! Hurry it up!’

  ‘What? I’m sorry, I don’t . . .’

  The heavy wooden cell door opened suddenly, almost striking Sarah in the face as she staggered on her endless walk to the window and back again. A wardress stood in the doorway, the same sturdy, slab-faced young woman who
had bathed her on the first day. She had her hands on her hips and a big bunch of keys at her belt. The one whom Sarah had thought of as an underservant, a coalheaver. She scowled at Sarah.

  ‘Time to slop out, yer ladyship! Pick up the bucket from under the loo, take it down the corridor and pour it away. You know the routine. This is a clean place, ‘Olloway!’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know.’ The intrusion, after so many hours of solitude, was devastating. Sarah felt herself sway, and hung on to the edge of the door to stop herself falling. Then she sat down, abruptly, on the edge of the bed.

  The wardress waited a moment, then sighed, with something that might have been interpreted as sympathy. ‘I see. A little bit tired are we, yer ladyship? You might not need yer mid-morning rest, my dear, if you was to see sense and eat the food provided for you. Or is it all pigswill, to a fine lady like you?’

  Sarah’s head suddenly hurt terribly, and red spots were moving to and fro before her eyes. She heard the exasperation in the woman’s voice, and thought, of course, she probably eats things much worse than this prison food every day. She thinks I’m proud.

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the food, it’s a protest . . .’

  ‘D’yer think I don’t know that? But you’re wasting your time refusing the food, Becket. You’re too much of a finickity lady, you’ve not got the strength for it. Can’t even lift a bucket yourself, can you?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ Sarah said. She thought, that’s another thing I’ve learnt here. At home my maid takes the chamber pot out from under my bed every morning and thinks nothing of it. But why should I expect someone else to do it? ‘It’s just that — I’ve hardly used it, really.’