Fred came round to the house that evening. ‘I thought we were to meet in the park?’
‘Yes… I… I got cold.’
‘But it’s warmer than it’s been all week.’
‘Yes. I don’t know… I… I’m always cold. You know that.’ I did not mean to sound so pettish.
Fred frowned. ‘And you know the reason. You are half starved.’
‘Whose fault is that?’
He turned away impatiently. ‘Mine, I suppose. Since I must carry all the ills of the world on my shoulders.’
‘Who do you blame then, if not this government and its loyal servants, the police?’
‘I suppose we cannot find fault in your wonderful leaders, who send you time and again into this torture?’
‘They endure it too, you know. You speak as though they did not.’
Fred gripped me by the shoulders. They crackled like old twigs. ‘I know they do, Maggie. But it is their choice, do you not see? And it is not yours. That much I am sure of.’
I felt the tears coming, as they do so often now. His arms were round me in a second, sharing his warmth, keeping me safe. He kissed the top of my head. ‘I hate to see you like this. You know I do. If I thought it was doing any good…all this window smashing, stone throwing…’
‘But it is. It is. Every day we are in the papers. It is the only way… Miss Christabel…’
‘It is not the only way, Maggie. It is a stupid way. The worst possible way. Yes, you are in the papers, but what do they say? That it is a scandal. Nothing short of vandalism. That the suffragettes are no better than hooligans. How much good do you think that does your cause? I can tell you. None. People who once believed in you are sickened by all this violence. You are playing into the Government’s very hands. You are giving them the bullets they need to shoot you down. Does Miss Christabel ever consider that when she is planning her next act of brilliance?’
‘But what can I do? What can I do?’ I sobbed. ‘It is my duty, my work – my way of life.’
‘Your first duty is to yourself, Maggie. You will be no good to them dead or infirm. Is that what you want? What Miss Christabel wants? Because that is how it will end if you do not look to your health. I say nothing of our life together, for it seems you care nothing for that these days.’ He stopped but I could feel his anger sparking right through into my pitiful bones. I don’t think I had ever felt so hopeless.
I answered, ‘I do think of it, Fred. It is the only comfort I have in my life, night or day. It is the only thing I feel sure of in this world. And if you take that away, there will be nothing.’
He dropped his hands. ‘Oh, Maggie. Why do you do this to me?’
‘Do what?’
‘Make me feel so guilty.’
I stared at him. ‘Why should you feel guilty? It is me that is causing all the trouble.’
He smoothed my bracken hair. ‘You are doing what you believe in. That is enough for anyone. But it grieves me so much to see you so skinny.’
‘A girl called me a witch today.’
‘Who was it? I shall handcuff her to a runaway carthorse.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t think you should. She was only little.’
‘Then I shall handcuff her to your broomstick. Teach her to mind her manners.’
‘Do I look like a witch, Fred? Tell me the truth.’
He cupped my face in his hands and kissed my nose. ‘I’ve never met one, but if I ever do, I hope she looks just like you.’ I took what comfort I could from that.
At our next meeting I dragged up all my courage and when it came to questions I stood up. After a while Miss Christabel spotted me and signalled that I should speak.
‘I would like to ask, on account we are a peaceful movement, is it not against our principles to cause so much damage to other people’s property?’
Miss Christabel looked at me in huge surprise. ‘Do you have an alternative, Maggie?’
This threw me. ‘What would you like us to do instead?’ asked Lady Con (as we all call her now).
I knew I must not say I did not know. ‘I am only afraid that someone will be hurt one day, and then the public will turn against us.’
Miss Christabel smiled. ‘It is a risk, certainly, Maggie. But should that happen, perhaps it will be time to remind the public of our suffering in Holloway and all the other prisons. I do not think that a graze from a tiny stone can quite equate say to the damage done to Lady Con by a week without food.’
Madness is my middle name. ‘I do not know that Lady Con feels hunger any worse than the rest of us, miss.’
Miss Christabel looked at me so patiently. ‘You are right, Maggie, and clearly you feel it more than most, or you would not have broken your fast on the very first occasion.’
I sat back down.
Afterwards Miss Sylvia came over to me. ‘How are you, Maggie? It’s so long since I have seen you.’
I said I was fine apart from my hair falling out and my belly swelling like a pumpkin after each trip to prison, and all for throwing a stone into a grating (my aim is not improving).
She nodded wearily. ‘I would prefer a more peaceful approach, myself. What does Fred make of it?’
‘He hates it. He hates any violence, and this he thinks is so pointless. Worse than that, for he says it turns people against us.’
‘Yes, it does. Even our own supporters. I have letters every day from women wishing to resign their membership. They want justice, of course they do, but not if innocent bystanders are harmed as a result.’
‘But Miss Christabel is right – we do suffer far more than they do.’
‘But at least we have the choice.’ She shivered suddenly. ‘If only everyone could choose what came to them.’
‘Is that not what we are fighting for?’
Miss Sylvia smiled her strange sad smile. ‘Yes, of course. I was thinking of the things we cannot change, like illness and…well, illness.’
‘Are you ill?’ I asked, for in truth she looked horribly pale.
‘Not me. Harry.’
‘Is he not well?’ I remembered how full of energy and life he had been that day in the office and with his plans for the Wooden Horse.
Miss Sylvia shook her head. ‘He has polio. It is paralysing him, joint by joint. Like some vile snake creeping through his body. Oh, he is in the very best hands and Mother is going on a lecture tour to America to raise funds for his treatment. I’m sure all will be well in the end.’ She bit her lip and stared hard at the ceiling, and I knew she did not believe one word of what she said.
‘He is young and a fighter. They are the best to conquer illness, are they not?’
She tried to smile. ‘Yes, yes, you are right. It’s just…very hard to see someone you love suffering so and not be able to do anything. That is the worst. Oh, why him? Why not me? Why couldn’t it have been me?’
‘You cannot mean that?’
Miss Sylvia looked me straight in the eye. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’
I was ashamed, for now I see what loving someone truly means.
Something terrible is to happen.
In Birmingham two of our women climbed on to a factory roof opposite the building where the Asquith was to speak. From there they flung stones and slates on to the roof of the hall, and generally frightened the vile man half to death, it seems. They were only captured after fire hoses were turned on them.
Their sentence was wicked – four months’ hard labour. Immediately they began to fast for that is the surest and quickest way out of prison, but they have not been freed and word has come out that they are to be fed by force.
I cannot imagine how awful this must be. How is it done? Miss Kerr said she supposed they would be offered such fine food their wills could not resist it, but Miss Davison said that was nonsense, and she had heard of it being employed in distant times to torture traitors. Though I do not heed one half of what she says, I asked her what she meant.
She said the prisoner was tied to a chai
r and a piece of iron pipe thrust down his throat and then boiling oil was poured down the pipe into his belly. I know she thinks me a silly ignorant creature, but did she really suppose I would be fooled by that? I asked her if she truly thought that was like to happen to our sisters. She went all huffy and then came back with, ‘If it does, so be it. I am ready.’
I said, well, I was certainly not. Justice was one thing and boiling oil was another, which made Miss Kerr giggle so much she got the hiccoughs. Miss Davison flung her a wild look and went stamping off to frighten someone else.
I used to think that there were so many things in life I would love to do. Going on a train was one of them. Being in a newspaper was another. Loving a man who did not beat me, wearing fine clothes, reading books.
All these I have achieved, but there is a price for everything. Tonight I must lay beside them pain, mortification, disgust, filth, shame, and most of all, fear – sick smothering fear that comes over you like a great thick blanket, choking the breath out of you. So much fear that I thought I would die of it. Now I know that there is no mercy in heaven for me.
All my life I have prayed and hoped that someone would look down on me and see that I was trying. And that for that I would be pitied and maybe, at last, forgiven for it all. Now I see this will not happen. Some sins are too bad. Lying with your brother is one of them. Or perhaps it is the baby he put in me then took away. Perhaps that baby is crying out for vengeance, for what became of it? Was it a boy or a girl? Where do babies go when they are pulled out of you too early?
I was brought here on Friday. We had gone on a train to Birmingham. I had, as usual, thrown my stones and missed everything in sight. I had, as usual, been arrested. I had, as usual, been taken to court and then sent on to prison.
The following morning came a man in a long coat, accompanied by five or six brutes. It makes me smile to think we called them ‘brutes’ for denying us food and fresh water. What is there left to call a woman – one of our own sex, who will tie your feet to a chair and your arms to its arms and crush your nose between her fingers so that you cannot breathe and when your mouth bursts open, fill it with swill not fit for pigs and clamp your lips together so that you half choke, half drown; who will listen to you choking and strike you over and over in the back so that the filth roars back up, tearing your throat like a razor, and then down again into your shrunken stomach, which hurls it back till the vomit comes flying from your nostrils in a great porridge of blood and bile and pus all down your sopping stinking clothes, for you cannot save yourself from wetting; who will leave you lying in your own foulness while she moves on to the next cell to start the game again?
A doctor, yes, for they are vile creatures, but a woman? Are these who we are fighting for? Tonight I have no more faith, no beliefs, no hopes. Tomorrow I shall be seventeen. Well, let that be all, I have had enough.
This morning I was taken to the Governor’s office. I feared it was to begin again and I knew I could not stand it. Could not. I stood before him.
‘Margaret Robins, you are to be released this afternoon. Return to your cell.’
At a quarter before two I was taken to the prison gates and turned out into the street. In Birmingham. I had no money, no ticket for the train, only my foul filthy clothes that I had splashed with cold water to try and rub the sick away and failed, as I have failed at everything else. No one to meet me. No grand procession with horses and bands and women waving banners. Nothing. I sat down on the curb. A policeman came up to me and asked me my name.
‘Maggie Robins.’
‘Then I must ask you to come along with me.’
I tried to get up but there was no strength left in me and I sank back. He raised his arm and I knew he was preparing to strike me. I just sat there, too weak to move, too smashed about to care.
Footsteps running. ‘Maggie? Oh God, Maggie. What have they done to you?’ Fred, crouching beside me. ‘Maggie? Do you hear me?’ Like he was speaking to a child. ‘Maggie, give me your hand. That’s right. I’ve come to take you home.’
I looked at him but he was ten years older than two weeks ago so I knew I must have died. He glanced up at the other man. ‘My thanks.’
The bobby was staring at me, frowning. ‘It cannot be right,’ he said, then shook his head and turned and walked away.
Fred carried me to a waiting cab. Outside the railway station he bought me a strawberry ice. I threw it in the gutter.
It was dark when the train arrived in London. I know now why I have been freed. It is to say goodbye to Ma.
I sat by her bed. Her neck was swollen and disgusting, like a great onion was bursting through her skin. She could hardly speak. Lucy attended to the young ones and, though she did not say a word to me, I saw that she was trying. My darling Evelyn came running to me as we opened the back door. ‘Ma’s got a bad neck.’
‘I know, sweet.’
‘Have you come to make her better?’
Fred swept her up into his arms and set her on his shoulders. She squealed with happiness. ‘Let me down, let me down.’
‘Only if you count to twenty.’
Off they went into the cold evening air. Inside all was stuffy, rancid, rotting. Pa was clamped in the corner like he had been nailed there.
I climbed the stairs.
Her eyes flickered as I came in. I saw that she did not like my looks. I sat down by the bed. Saw her waxy skin, sweat-drenched hair, eyes dull with pain. I remembered Miss Sylvia’s words: ‘Why couldn’t it have been me?’ But I didn’t want it to be me. I didn’t want it to be anyone. I wanted to save her. Make her well again. I wanted to tell her all the things I never had. How much I loved her. That I was proud to be her daughter. That I never meant to…but the words would not come. They stayed locked inside my head.
‘Ma, I am so sorry I have not been home.’
She stirred.
I took a breath. ‘Ma, I am giving it up. The Cause. There is no point. I will come home and nurse you back to health, I promise you.’
She turned her face away.
I tried to straighten the sheet. She flinched as it brushed against her skin. ‘Ma, Fred has asked me to give it up. I love him. He is a good man. The best that ever lived.’
Still she faced the wall.
I knelt down beside the bed. ‘Ma, tell me what you want. I know I have not been a good daughter to you. I have been selfish and vain and just because I brought money home, I thought I was better than you – all of you. But I knew nothing. Tell me what to do, and whatever you say, I will do it.’
Then she did look back, and through her croaky blistered throat she whispered, ‘Fight for us, Maggie’.
Mrs Grant helped me lay her out. I wanted to do it alone, but since I had never done it, it made sense to let her show me. She did not interfere, just gave advice.
I washed Ma’s body gently with soft soap. She was swollen all over with great bulging lumps. Her breasts were shrivelled like an eagle’s claw had raked them. Her skin was greasy yellow.
I thought, how can a person live, even for an hour, with a body that turns against them? Is this how I shall end? And I thought, if she had been rich she could have been cured. The rich do not die covered in bruises and swellings, between rough sheets in dark, stinking rooms with no one by to wipe their sweat away or cool their fever. They do not leave a family without a mother.
All night long I have lain awake. I am needed here. I cannot desert the little ones. Pa will ignore them and Lucy… Who knows? Ma cannot have wanted me to forsake them, even for the Cause. I must stay. I know I must. Yet now, lying here on this flea-bitten mattress with Lucy’s feet in my face I cannot help thinking of my beautiful room in Argyle Place. Of all my learning and typewriting and adding up accounts. Is it all to go to waste?
Oh, Ma, forgive me. Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to cry for I have forgotten.
The parlour was dark, save for a streak of moonlight on the coffin. Such a cold light. The very wood looked l
ifeless, dry as bone – none of the rich warm swirls of Argyle Place. Only rough raw planks, splintered at the seams, and a coarse linen cloth to shield her from their scraping.
Clouds crept across the moon and blacked her out. Took her away.
I found some matches and a stub of candle. I sat by her till dawn. Waiting for her to answer.
We buried Ma this afternoon. She is near Mrs Grant’s daughter on a little hill behind the church. In the morning I took Evelyn and Will to the river-bank and we picked some flowers for them to lay on the grave. They had mostly withered by the time Reverend Beckett had done preachifying, but it was no matter for Fred had bought a whole bunch of white lilies that near covered the coffin, and there was another great pile from Miss Sylvia and Miss Annie. I saw Mrs Beckett eyeing them most greedily so I shall go by the church tomorrow morning and see if she has nabbed them for the altar.
Afterwards we went home and Mrs Grant and I served tea and cold meat with pickles to everyone. Will liked it so much he asked if we could bury someone else tomorrow. I slapped him, so for once in his life he had something real to cry about. Lucy spent the whole afternoon making cow’s eyes at Fred, for all the good it did her. Alfie’s girl, Edith, is a sweet-natured creature. She had brought a cake from the bakery that she had paid for herself and when the others had gone she stayed and helped me clear up, poor Mrs Grant having fallen to weeping. I gave the poor soul the baby to hold.
I walked with Fred to the bus stop. I know he would have stayed, slept on the floor, if I had asked him. I did not. I watched him mount the stairs. He always likes the open deck. Says you can see forever. He turned to wave to me. My hand waved back. Is this what it is like, being dead? I have remarked every single thing today, and felt nothing.
Pa had been at the ale when I got back. He was slumped by the hearth holding Ma’s shawl that I had given her and snivelling. I thought, if he wipes his nose on that I shall spit.
Crooked Pieces Page 25
