Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  ‘Yes, I see. That will be all, Reeves. You may go.’

  ‘Sir.’ The man inclined his head and left, his polished shoes clicking quietly across the floor. When he had gone, Jonathan stood for a moment in a daze, the letter crumpled in his hand. Then he sank abruptly into the chair in front of the desk and fingered the torn leather.

  My God, he thought. Debbie did this! What the devil has she found out?

  I hope one day you may repent of your perversion.

  I go away for two nights and my wife’s sister believes I have become a monster. Has all the world gone mad?

  Sarah had not slept after all, that afternoon. Deborah felt guilty about it. Sarah looked far paler and weaker and thinner than she had expected. Twice she had insisted on leaving the room but each time Sarah had called her back, like a fractious child.

  ‘I’ve been alone in a cell so long,’ she said. ‘You can’t understand what a joy it is to have company. Don’t go, please.’

  So Deborah stayed and they talked. First, about life in prison, and how she had escaped. Then, innocuously, about Charles in Ireland. Sarah had not heard about the gun-running. She was intrigued, but not afraid, at all. She agreed with Deborah that, even if there was a conflict, women and children would be safe, and the fact of the troubles would mean that Ulster police would be too busy to search for missing suffragettes. But Deborah wondered if Sarah was strong enough to travel.

  Sarah laughed. A rather strained, hoarse laugh from her scarred throat, but a laugh for all that.

  ‘Don’t worry — I may look thin but I’m not dead yet. This is the essential me you see before you, Debbie, bereft of all unnecessary fat. I think it’s a wonderful idea going to Glenfee.’

  ‘At least you will be safe from the London police.’

  ‘Yes. I may have been a martyr for a week, but I have no desire at all to go back to prison. The further we can get from Holloway the better.’

  For a while they talked about Tom. Deborah was determined to keep all news of her own problems from Sarah until she was stronger. Or at least until they were on the train.

  Then, inevitably, they talked about Jonathan. Quietly, bitterly, Sarah told her sister the story of what she had discovered that day before she slashed the picture. And the role Martin Armstrong had played. It was as Deborah had suspected. Anxiously, she asked: ‘Was I right to invite Jonathan here? If you don’t want to see him, I can go downstairs and see him myself, or ask Mrs Stewart to send him away. He doesn’t even know you’re here, and he’ll never suspect it.’

  Sarah thought for a minute. She stared quietly out of the window into the sunlight over the mews, the bones over her sunken face clear and proud as those of a Spanish aristocrat. Then she said, very quietly: ‘No. Send him up. I want to see him.’

  ‘I shall be with you all the time. You mustn’t let him tire you too much.’

  A faint, bitter smile flickered on Sarah’s face. ‘It will be exhausting, of course. But it has to be done. You were right to arrange it. What time will he be here?’

  ‘Between four and five, I said.’

  ‘Then I must be up and dressed by then. I don’t want to meet him like an invalid.’

  ‘You should rest before then.’

  ‘I’ll try, if you stay beside me. You don’t have to talk. Just be here.’

  And so Deborah drew the curtains and sat quietly in an armchair by the fire, her hands clasped softly on her stomach, thinking, while Sarah lay in her bed and dozed. Both of them, from time to time, glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and watched the way its hands gradually swept on towards four . . .

  ‘Your visitor, Mrs Cavendish. In here, sir, if you please.’

  ‘Hello, Debbie.’

  ‘Jonathan. So you came?’

  ‘As you see.’

  Mrs Stewart closed the door softly behind him. Jonathan stood in the pleasant sitting room, taking in the flowery, overstuffed armchairs, the light cheerful wallpaper, the pictures of country scenes on the walls. The rigid, unsmiling pose of his sister-in-law standing in front of him.

  ‘May I sit down?’ Jonathan had left his hat and coat downstairs. He felt awkward, standing like this in a modest hotel room. It reminded him a little of the rooms above Martin Armstrong’s consulting rooms. Don’t think of that now.

  ‘I think I would rather say what I have to say to you standing, Jonathan.’

  She knows then, he thought. How on earth did she find out? He held out his hands, took a pace towards her.

  ‘Debbie, what is all this? Why on earth are you here?’

  ‘Partly, Jonathan, because I couldn’t bear to stay in your house any longer. Oh Johnny, do I have to spell it out to you? Not only have you betrayed your own wife and lied to me — you put her life at risk by what you did!’

  ‘Her life? Sarah’s you mean? What in the world are you talking about, Debbie? I tried to help her — you know I did!’

  ‘By sending in Martin Armstrong?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. You know that — you were there.’

  Deborah stared at him. Her own husband, she thought. Sarah could have been killed if Ruth had not rescued her. Does he really not know?

  ‘Listen, Johnny. We know all about the . . . the women you went to see above Martin Armstrong’s flat. We know about the little girls he takes there and the money men pay to seduce them. And about the house in Hackney — and you know all this too! So how could you possibly take me to see such a man and then pretend he had persuaded her to eat? Johnny, he nearly killed her!’

  Silence. Jonathan stood very still, trying to take in what she had said. She looked so flushed, furious with herself because of the tears that were coming to her eyes because of the trauma of this moment. All the way here he had told himself that her letter meant she must have found out about his whoring. Though he could not understand how. But this was worse than that, much worse.

  ‘Debbie, I don’t understand you. Truly.’

  ‘Then if you don’t understand her, ask me.’

  He hadn’t noticed the door into the bedroom which had been left ajar. Now he turned and saw . . .

  A ghost.

  ‘Sarah!’ But it was not Sarah. This woman was too thin, too pale and anyway this is the wrong place entirely she must be really dead as Debbie says . . .

  ‘Everything she says is true, Jonathan. Every word.’

  ‘But . . .’ He recovered, took a step towards her. ‘My dear, is it really you?’

  ‘Don’t touch me, Jonathan!’

  Well, that at least rang true.

  ‘Why did you send that man to torture me? Debbie is right — I might have died. Do you hate me so much?’

  ‘I don’t . . . Sarah, why are you here? Have you been released, is that it?’

  On the proud, beautiful face a wintry smile. No love though. ‘I escaped. Don’t ask me how.’

  ‘I don’t care how! My dear, you look ill. Won’t you sit down? I can’t bear to see you like this.’

  Sarah paused, then sat. It was true, her legs were shaking. But maybe that was with anger. Very quietly, her throat hurting slightly with the words, she said: ‘Jonathan, I went out to slash that picture as a political protest against the government’s treatment of Mrs Pankhurst, but also because I had discovered what you were doing when you were visiting Martin Armstrong. You didn’t really get treatment for a stomach complaint, did you? You were visiting prostitutes. Don’t pretend – I know quite well it’s true. You must imagine how much that hurt me. It would hurt any woman but especially me. Jonathan, you know how my father died. When I married you I believed that I had found an honourable man who would never, ever do such a thing, and yet . . .’

  ‘Sarah, I did not . . .’

  ‘You ran the risk of infecting me, Jonathan! Just as any man does who goes to such dreadful places. And worse than that, I discovered in prison that that man Armstrong whom you claim as a friend is actually a whoremaster who purveys young girls as merchandise for the sexual attentions of men su
ch as my husband . . .’

  For a moment her voice failed her. The tears got in the way.

  ‘Sarah, I promise you this is not true . . .’

  ‘Don’t lie, Jonathan! You know it is. And not only that – you sent this man, this monster, to my cell to . . . to torture me. That’s all it can be called. Stuff a yard of tube down my throat and pour cold soup down it until I vomit all over him. That’s what he did and you sent him!’

  ‘The devil he did!’

  Jonathan swung round, glared for a moment at Deborah, stunned . . . She saw eyes wide with shock, fists clenched in rage. Then he knelt down in front of Sarah, took her hands in his.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘Johnny, don’t!’ Debbie hovered over him, pushing him back. He turned, got up.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you – my God! Sarah, are you telling me that man forcibly fed you?’

  ‘Yes, Jonathan. That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

  ‘Then he lied to me! The utter, filthy slug – he told me he had persuaded you to eat. I told you that, didn’t I, Debbie? It was the truth!’

  ‘And you believed it? Knowing what sort of a man he really is?’

  Jonathan stood quite still, staring first at his sister-in-law, then at his wife. He felt numb. As though a spear had struck him deep inside, where there are no nerves. Just heart and lungs and liver. And a man’s soul.

  Slowly, his mind searched through what they had said. He was a lawyer, even in shock. He took things piece by piece.

  ‘You say that he force fed you – believe me, I did not know that. You say I visited prostitutes at his consulting rooms – that is true. But they were all medically clean, Sarah, I could not infect you. I took good care of that.’

  ‘And some of them were children?’

  ‘Some were . . . quite young, yes.’

  He met her eyes briefly. Husband to wife, with the memory of all the years they had known each other. Thought they had known each other . . . Then he looked away, his face haggard.

  ‘Sarah, none of this would have happened if we . . . if you . . . The women I went to, it was for a medical problem, as Martin told me. Perhaps I was foolish to believe it, but that was how it began.’

  For a while there seemed no more to say. Once, Jonathan met Deborah’s eyes and she looked down. Without thinking about it Jonathan said: ‘I will kill him.’

  ‘What?’ Deborah gasped. ‘Jonathan, what are you saying?’

  ‘You heard.’ He turned to Sarah. ‘Clearly I have been a fool and betrayed you, my dear. If I were in your position I would not want to see a man like myself ever again. Perhaps you won’t, I don’t know. But, whatever you think of me, I value you and I have a score to settle with that man. When I have done that I shall come back and beg forgiveness perhaps, if I can. Till then, take care of each other; and Sarah . . . I am sorry.’

  The door closed and he was gone. The two women looked at each other.

  ‘Does he mean it?’ Deborah asked.

  Sarah sighed. ‘I don’t know, Debbie. Somehow I doubt it, he’s not that sort of man. But, to tell you the truth, at this moment I don’t really care!’

  On the way across town Martin Armstrong thought: if I can do the same here, I’ll be safe. This is the only other place Sarah Becket knows about. If I can get all the girls out of here, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police himself will be able to walk around this house and won’t be able to prove anything!

  It was rush hour, though, the end of the working day. Martin’s motor taxi was blocked in a series of jams caused by motor omnibuses, horse-drawn drays, other taxis, trams, hansom cabs, cars, motor lorries, and even coster boys pushing barrows. The pavements were thronged with clerks, businessmen, and shoppers returning home. At one point a shire horse, pulling an omnibus in front of Martin’s taxi, got its loose shoe jammed in the tram rails. The animal panicked, wrenched itself free of its traces, snapped the four-inch thick shaft of the omnibus, and kicked in the spokes of the wheel of a brewer’s dray, which collapsed sideways, spilling barrels of beer all over the road. When the ensuing chaos and argument had lasted over half an hour, Martin paid off his taxi driver and got out to walk. But that proved a further mistake because he was not a fit man, and after a few hundred yards he was out of breath and his chest hurt. He did not find a free cab capable of moving through the streets until half past six, and it was nearly eight when it set him down outside the house in Red Lion Street.

  The argument here was calmer, but not dissimilar to that which he’d had with Mrs Burgoyne. The madam, Mrs Stone, saw no reason why she should move immediately, and she had nowhere obvious to go. If Martin would pay to put herself and the girls up in a hotel or a boarding house for a week, she might consider it, she said. Otherwise, no. Anyway, there were customers in the house at the moment and others who had made appointments. She couldn’t close down just like that! She was a businesswoman, she had a reputation to keep up. Surely a man like Martin, with connections in high places, could head off any unpleasant investigation that might take place?

  Anyway, everyone knew that suffragettes were mad. No one in authority would take what they said seriously for a moment.

  The conversation was interrupted by a scream from upstairs.

  ‘Mrs Stone! Mrs Stone! Look out the window, quick! There’s a terrible huge crowd outside, all pointing here!’

  Martin felt the same shock to his heart that he had felt earlier that day when he had discovered Sarah Becket was missing. He swayed, clutched the back of a chair, and breathed deeply until the pain in his chest lessened and his pulse slowed. He walked to the window beside the front door, sweat prickling his forehead.

  Outside in the street was an awesome sight. Thirty or forty women, all dressed in white, stood close together under the streetlights, holding placards and chanting. Martin read some of the placards.

  End Child Prostitution

  Close this Whorehouse.

  Chastity for Men!

  Stop Veneral Disease — End the Great Scourge!

  Votes for Women!

  Round the outside of the group of suffragettes was a crowd of onlookers. Some — a group of young shop assistants and delivery boys in flat caps and scruffy suits — were enjoying themselves throwing fruit and tomatoes, several of which had splashed on the suffragettes’ white dresses. For a moment Martin cheered them silently, hoping they would drive the women away.

  Then a delegation of women approached the front door. They were led by an elderly, determined looking woman with grey hair swept back severely into a bun under a small blue hat, and round spectacles on her nose. Behind her came four others. Three were in white dresses carrying banners; the fourth was a tall young woman in a plain brown dress whom Martin had seen before somewhere.

  The wardress! Ruth Harkness.

  Hurriedly, Mrs Stone locked the door and Martin stepped back from the window and turned down the light so that he could see and not be seen. The women outside hammered on the knocker. To his disgust, Martin saw that there were a number of shabbily-dressed young men behind them, earnestly scribbling into their notebooks.

  The doorknob rattled. When the women outside found that the door was locked, one of them called out.

  ‘Open this door, please! We represent the Women’s Social and Political Union. We are campaigning for the purity of relations between the sexes, and we believe this to be a brothel which is responsible for the spread of venereal disease and the deliberate corruption of young children! We want to speak to the landlord, Dr Martin Armstrong.’

  Martin groaned. He saw the young reporters scribbling frantically in their notebooks. Girls were milling around on the stairs behind him and two flustered middle-aged men came downstairs, hurriedly buttoning their waistcoats.

  ‘What the devil is it, Mrs Stone?’ one of the men asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  Mrs Stone gestured helplessly towards the door. ‘Bloody suffragettes! Blasted health and purity campaign, looks like! Caught you with you
r trousers down, haven’t they?’ Despite her annoyance, she couldn’t resist a smile.

  The man looked furious, pompous, and terrified all at once. ‘I can’t be found here, woman! I’ve got a family, a home, a reputation to keep up! Is there a back way out?’

  Mrs Stone laughed. ‘Yes, if you have to. Out through the yard by the dustbins. Show him, Jane, will you?’

  As the two men hurried out, Martin looked about him irresolutely. Should he stay? After all, the suffragettes couldn’t get in, unless . . .

  There was a crash of breaking glass. The window next to the front door smashed and a stone rolled on the floor.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘Look out!’

  ‘Stand back, there!’

  ‘Open this door!’

  ‘No!’

  More windows smashed. Martin ducked out of the hall into one of the downstairs front rooms, but stones were coming in there as well. Two, three, six — there was shattered glass everywhere, all over the chairs and carpet. Shouts and cheers from outside, screams and yells from upstairs. He could see the stones going up to the first floor too.

  Then the keen, piercing sound of a policeman’s whistle.

  I can’t stay here, Martin thought. The police will come in and interview anyone who’s here — I’ve got to get away. Whatever happens, this is ruin. Where shall I go?

  He ran out through the kitchen and the scullery, into the back yard, past the dustbins and the outside loo. On down the filthy alleyway, panting, his heavy body unused to exercise. At least there were no women here — they had not thought to guard the back entrance. The shouts and screams were fading now. It was a long alley — at the end he could see a pool of light cast by a gas lamp where the alley emerged into the main street. Martin’s chest hurt and his forehead was sweating. As he came near the end of the alley he slowed to a walk, breathing deeply, painfully.

  Where now? he thought. Away from here. Home, to hide and plan and think. What good will that do? The scandal will be all over the press in the morning. What shall I say? The police are bound to go into that house now, even if they do arrest the suffragettes for breaking the windows. At least I wasn’t there. If Mrs Stone lies convincingly they may not be able to prove any connection at first.