A Petrol Scented Spring

by Ajay Close

  She has not seen him like this before. Angry about the cruelty of the world, the short-sightedness of the powerful. Proud to be on the side of right. He reminds her of herself.

  He tells her a woman whose husband dies of syphilis may remarry, remain clinically healthy, and yet bear syphilitic children. He has seen them, a few months old, already blind, or deaf, their bones weakened, their spleens enlarged. Others live for decades in apparent health, only to suffer sudden attack. These women may be blameless in their conduct − some of them − but they are a horrible danger to the community.

  Women. Their fault.

  ‘And what would you do about them?’ she asks, acid-sweet.

  ‘Test every woman admitted to a laying-in hospital. Those found to be positive would be sterilised, the children removed to an institution.’

  ‘And the men—?’

  He looks at her.

  ‘—what is to happen to the men while these women are mutilated and their children incarcerated?’

  His face shows a familiar exasperation. It is too serious a matter for rhetoric. He is talking about the opportunity to wipe out cretinism and disease, to eliminate a significant source of human misery. If every country adopted such a system they could weed out the breeding stock and improve the entire human race.

  Again she asks, ‘Why take no action against the men?’

  ‘Syphilis is not a notifiable disease. The government favours a voluntary approach.’

  ‘For men.’

  ‘The women will be in hospital anyway.’

  ‘So women are to pay?’

  ‘Half measures are better than none.’

  Always she has this sense of rival perspectives within her. Feminine, masculine. Her own true judgement, and the order of things outside her, the prejudices the world calls common sense. Men are not split in this way. They sense our inner division and call it neurosis.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  He knows he shouldn’t ask. ‘For what?’

  ‘Confirming my principles. Women are to be tested because we’re more biddable, and our unjust treatment will continue until we become as violently unreasonable as men.’

  She has long known this, it is what pushed her into militancy, so I wouldn’t accuse her of insincerity. She means every word. But unlike him, she understands that they are also playing a game.

  ‘How are you sleeping?’

  ‘The bedding could be cleaner.’

  ‘But the sleep itself?’

  ‘Too many dreams.’

  ‘Of what?’

  She turns onto her side. He will allow this sometimes, pretending not to notice. ‘Are you an admirer of Doctor Freud?’

  ‘That charlatan.’

  ‘Maybe. But it’s intriguing, no: the idea of an unconscious life whose proof is its invisibility?’

  ‘A fool’s paradox.’ He looks at the wardress, who walks out.

  ‘Have you never suspected you might possess a hidden self?’

  ‘No.’

  She smiles as if at some private joke, ‘I sense him.’

  ‘Do you?’ he says sarcastically.

  ‘A gaoler who envies the lawbreaker’s freedom.’

  ‘Claptrap.’

  ‘You’re sure of that? Only, the strangest look just crossed your face.’

  ‘And I suppose you envy the racegoers whose stand you set fire to?’

  Again and again he comes back to this. The flames didn’t even take hold, and still he can’t forgive her.

  ‘The fire was intended as a cathartic. We live in diseased times. That’s why I’m in this hospital. And you, for that matter. Our sickness is symptomatic.’

  ‘I’m not sick.’

  ‘Not even at heart? When you push that tube down my throat?’

  ‘I do what has to be done.’

  ‘But what do you feel?’

  ‘Feelings don’t come into it—’

  She gives him a long look.

  ‘—And what do you feel when . . . when you are fed?’

  ‘I feel powerful—’

  He laughs, a short sharp bark.

  ‘—you can imprison my body, but there is something within me stronger than my flesh.’

  ‘You are doing yourself harm, weakening yourself in ways you may never recover from. You don’t understand the risks.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Then you belong in a lunatic asylum, not a prison.’

  ‘You’re too afraid of weakness.’

  This takes him aback. ‘Every man fears weakness.’

  ‘But not like you.’

  When I meet him, two years hence, Hugh Ferguson Watson will be charming, good natured, quietly humorous. Admittedly, a heaviness in his silences, an occasional rush of blood to his face, will suggest he might be otherwise if I cross some invisible line. This masculine edge of danger will only make him the more attractive to me and, in so far as he is aware of it, he will seem pleased. But in June 1914, he is not a man who cares overmuch how others feel towards him. He applies judgement. Approves, rather than likes. His step quickens when he goes to meet the person who stimulates his intellect, but this is not the same as forming an attachment. Relations with his parents are strained by disappointment on their side and frustration on his. None of the Watsons understands why an eldest son with first claim on the farm would choose a trade that depends so greatly on the practitioner’s affability. His teachers have impressed on him the vigilance required if he is to rise to a social distinction matching his intellectual gifts. The first question he asks in any situation is not how do I feel? But does this demean me? And, how can it be turned to use? Every impulse but one is filtered in this way. The exception is irritation. The portcullis of his intellect lifts. That country boy’s body unbends. Heart pumps, lungs fill, muscles flex. This is his only indulgence.

  Lord knows, he’s provoked to it. There’s a case of tuberculosis in the men’s hospital that could yet turn into an epidemic. Summer is always bad for contagious diseases. A housebreaker has shingles. In the upper ward, a wife-killer lies baw-faced with parotitis and a baker who used adulterated flour is sweating his way through scarlatina. Half the criminal lunatic department has gone down with enteric. On top of that, he must deal with the thirty or so women the last damn-fool Medical Officer weaned off gin with prisoners’ laudanum. He has enough on his hands without having to worry about healthy women trying to kill themselves for the vote.

  An MP is asking questions in the Commons about his treatment of Ethel Moorhead. There’s a procession of busybodies trying to get into the women’s hospital: chaplains and town councillors and freemason solicitors, respectable matrons who lick envelopes for women’s suffrage. The Governor forced his way in last night. What’s the point of writing daily reports if the old soak doesn’t trust him? He’ll be turning the Prison Commissioners against him, passing on tittle-tattle from Matron. Careful how he does it, nothing that puts him out on a limb, but the Commission secretary can be relied on to read between the lines. Why else would Dunlop be here? Doctor Dunlop has been a friend to him in the past, but he’s another who has not risen so high without knowing how to hedge his bets. ‘Just a flying visit,’ the Governor says, as if you can introduce the Prison Commission’s medical adviser into a situation like this without stirring up a byke.

  The wardress is instructed to give Prisoner Gordon an extra dose of laudanum, which should keep her quiet, but one glance will show Dunlop she’s not gaining weight. Thank God for Prisoner Scott. A complete vindication of the feeding policy, if only she would behave. But she has a genius for sensing what he wants of her and doing the exact opposite. She knows something’s afoot, and puts up an extra struggle against the morning feed. Not that she’s ever passive, but today she’s like a demon. Lindsay has to straddle her. The milk that comes back up is pink with blood and gritted with chips of tooth enamel.

  At eleven he comes back and tells the wardress to bathe her and comb her hair. She wants to know why. He puts on a
show of changing his mind and her face falls, but she won’t beg him. So now neither of them have what they want, unless he can think of a way of getting her washed that won’t look like weakness. He’s sounding her chest when she announces she has heard screaming. This seems unlikely: the hospital and the female cell block are separate buildings. Has the wardress been gossiping, or is she fishing for news? He says her ears are playing tricks again, but the blasted woman is like a terrier with a rat: she knows there are other suffragettes here. Why are they not in the hospital? He tells her she should be able to work that out for herself. The hospital is for the sick. They are taking their meals and serving out their sentences. That shuts her up.

  She passes the empty hours by ranking all the people she hates in order of precedence. Before she began campaigning for the vote she would have been shocked by the thought of hating anyone. It was ignorance that made people do hateful things, they just needed help to see the light. She knows better now. She has been mocked, and insulted, and called obscene names by men who dine with bishops and professors. She has been shouted down by rich men’s wives who couldn’t care less about their destitute sisters. It is hard to decide whom she detests more: the society women who use the position they have gained through marriage to deny other women a more honest influence, or the men who find the idea of women voting too killingly funny. Today she hates neither as much as she hates the prison functionary who doesn’t care enough to form an opinion on the question.

  He is behaving oddly this morning. When he examines her, her nostrils detect the usual tobacco and shirt-collar starch, mingled with a new scent of sweat, though the air feels no warmer than yesterday. She is given a bed bath, after all, and her hair is brushed and plaited. Her heart leaps. Is it possible that by tonight she will be held in Muriel’s arms? She composes a pithy, defiant, witty speech for the women at the prison gate. If her appearance is truly unaltered, as the doctor claims, she can go home. Mother will make her cloudy lemonade with the perfect balance of bitter and sweet. She will climb Arthur’s Seat right to the top, looking out over all Edinburgh, feeling the wind that blows up there on the stillest of days; or take her sisters to pick wild strawberries by the water of Leith, find a patient toad on a shady path, touch a fingertip to his dear dry back to make him jump.

  Early in the afternoon, when the sun burns a patch of whitish-gold on the floor just beneath the window, they come. The doctor’s tread and less familiar footsteps. The door opens. She last met Doctor Dunlop in Calton Gaol. Older than Doctor Watson, short and stout, with mutton-chop whiskers and a better cut of frock coat. The sort of roguish uncle who offers you a sip of whisky behind Mother’s back. She sits up, ignoring the wardress’s command, and smiles at him. He does not reciprocate. So now she knows: she is not getting out.

  Doctor Watson’s face turns beetroot when he catches sight of her. He rasps at the wardress to get her down, then, in a new, unctuous voice, tells Doctor Dunlop that the prisoner has gained two pounds since arriving at the gaol. The calomel has sorted out her bowels, which moved twice overnight.

  It is intolerable to be spoken of like this, and the disappointment is worse, having come so close to freedom in her head. Tears prick her eyes, but she won’t weep.

  Our mothers brought us up to exercise self-control. Our brothers might lose their tempers, but it was the duty of we women to exert a moral influence. We were not always angels but, year by year, the habit of restraint became more entrenched. It was for men to make their mark in the world. Women’s sphere was internal, a space which must remain spotless. Socially, we existed as a stillness: a half-warming, half-blinding glow from our corner of the room. To raise your voice or, heaven forbid, your hand, to throw back your head and show your teeth in a laugh – or even a terrible glimpse of tongue! – to be present as a creature of flesh-and-blood and impulse and error, was to become at once conspicuous and invisible. Outcast. Arabella knows women who suffer agonies just stooping to chalk a meeting place on the pavement, dreading the chivalrous gent who will see a swooning maiden and rush to her aid. In the beginning, she managed the embarrassment by creating a sort of shame spot, a blur on her left side she was forever looking away from. But here, now, there can be no looking away. She lifts her head, fills her lungs, and roars.

  Are the Commissioners aware her treatment is in breach of their rules?

  Doctor Watson forces her head back against the mattress.

  When she cries out at the indignity, she sees Dunlop wince. She tells him Doctor Ferguson Watson is a disgrace to his profession, and to the Commission. Needlessly brutal. Quite without regard for her modesty.

  The doctor bends over her, blocking Dunlop’s view. His jaw is tight, a whitish margin around his mouth within his florid face. Behind him, Dunlop mutters something about not wanting to undo all your good work and for a split-second the doctor’s glassy stare sharpens to check her reaction. It doesn’t take her long to work it out. He has been boasting of winning her confidence, dropping nuggets of intelligence into his reports. She has told him nothing that matters. What difference can it make if they know about her early rheumatic fever, or her mother’s disapproval of militant action? Nevertheless, to have told him anything now seems an error of judgement. This too is more than she can bear.

  She fights him, really fights him, trying to sit up. The wardress can’t get close enough to help him and Dunlop doesn’t try. Doctor Watson warns her she is growing excited. This agitation is not good for her. She must lie back so he can sound her chest. His would-be calm demeanour fools no one. The tendons in his neck are taut, his breath smells violently metallic. She too is out of her depth, past the point of histrionics, revolted by what he has done to her, the talking no less than the feeding, all that cant about cowardly politicians at odds with the public good. The cynicism of it rises within her, filling her throat.

  She vomits over his legs. Considering the length of time since her last feed, the quantity is remarkable.

  He shouts, ‘You did that on purpose!’

  ‘I wish I had!’

  His face contorts in rage and disgust. ‘You are out of order.’

  ‘Take your hands off me!’

  ‘Will you lie down!’

  Is Doctor Dunlop reminded of anything, as he watches this scene; might he even feel a pang of exclusion? How like it is to marriage, the uninhibited passion in their voices, the murderous vigour in their limbs. Neither hears Dunlop’s cough, his sotto voce warning. The medical officer handles her as roughly as he would a man, using all his might to overpower her.

  She screams at him, ‘You’re hurting me.’

  ‘And you are putting on a show for the company.’

  She sinks her teeth into his hand.

  ‘Damn you!’ he roars. His arm draws back. Not the flat of his hand, but a fist.

  ‘Doctor Watson! Calm yourself.’

  The arm drops, the blow unstruck, a cloudiness in both their faces, as if wrenched out of a dream.

  Dunlop takes over, despatching the doctor to change his sodden trousers. A wardress arrives to help, but by now Prisoner Scott is docile. She reclines on the mattress, a fetching colour in her cheeks.

  That afternoon, when Dunlop has departed and Doctor Watson is absent on his rounds, Arabella gets out of bed. Immediately, the wardress is upon her, dragging her back. No matter. She has stood on her own two feet again.

  With me, he sulked. Silent days, weeks, months on end. When he spoke at last, I had to smile as if it were a day like any other. As if his moods were as unchallengeable as the weather. If I dared to remark on the change, he withdrew again. I could not rouse him to violence, or any other passion.

  NINE

  The doctor believes the prisoner’s resistance may be dietary in origin. He will try three tablespoons of sugar, not four, in the pint and a half of eggy milk, plus regular soap-and-water enemas. The wardresses grumble about cleaning her up, but she’s always quiet after, purged of the irritability that so disturbs her rest. He goes over t
he Governor’s head to the Commission and gains approval for two wardresses to remain with her at all times. Any movement seems to excite her, jeopardising her health. There will be no turning a blind eye when she rolls onto her side. Even in sleep, she will obey doctor’s orders.

  He sees now he has been too lax with her. What he called humanity was weakness. He won’t make that mistake again. She is a criminal serving a prison sentence. She has forfeited her right to the respect other women enjoy. Day after day so civilised and ironical and then, for the one hour that matters, to turn hellcat, spitting and clawing, making all his successes look like empty boasting. Well, he’s not done with her yet.

  Each day he follows a fixed routine. Urine samples are taken early, enemas administered late. The feeding takes around two and a half hours. His part is over in twenty minutes, but until the liquid has been absorbed into her system Lindsay and the wardresses must sit it out, clamping a towel over her mouth, fingers ready to close her nostrils. They do it in relays: it’s tiring on the arms. Only when the contents of her stomach have passed into the small intestine can she be left to sleep.

  So far, the physical examination has been a relatively dignified affair. He has touched her with a formality that is almost a seeking of permission, and she has anticipated each gesture, lifting and closing her arm over the thermometer, offering her wrist, unbuttoning her nightdress and averting her face a moment before the stethoscope touches her skin. There has been a trace of satire in her movements, it is true, but also grace, and physical collusion. A rhythm. As if they were dancing.

  For him to deviate from this protocol, to grasp her chin and push the thermometer into her mouth, is not much less shocking than a blow.

  Twenty-four hours have passed since Doctor Dunlop’s visit. He ignores her wrist, a finger on her neck the way a stockman checks a cow. She is tempted to spit out the thermometer as she did on the first night, but what if he is trying to provoke just such a reaction? If she obliges him, he will be free to vent the anger boiling inside him. She is afraid of this anger. She doesn’t know why. What could he do to her that could be worse than the feeding?