Crooked Pieces

by Sarah Grazebrook

  Mrs Grant was somewhat recovered. ‘Maggie, your Pa and I have been talking…’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It is arranged. I will help with the baby and little Will and Evelyn. Lucy can continue her job and Edith says she will call every evening and put them to bed if I cannot do it.’

  I stared at her. ‘What are you saying?’

  I must have looked mighty wild for she became nervous. ‘So that you need not worry. You have enough to deal with…’

  I shook my head. ‘I must come home. I cannot continue. That is all finished. Over. This is where I belong now.’

  Mrs Grant looked agitated. She glanced at Pa.

  I have never thought much of my father. I knew he would not care who did what, so long as his food was waiting for him and his shoes cleaned, but he pulled himself out of his chair and came to me. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘No, Maggie. It shall be as Mrs Grant says. It is what your ma wanted.’

  I looked at him and it was as if a great iron cage had disappeared from round my heart and I could feel again. I burnt with anger, enough to set his skin on fire with just one breath.

  ‘How do you know what Ma wanted, Pa? When did you ever bother to ask?’

  He took a step back. ‘Maggie…’

  ‘No don’t bother to answer, because I know the answer. Never. You… You let her die. She could have got well. She could have got better.’

  ‘Maggie, no…’ He fended my words away as though they were blows. ‘Tell her, Agnes.’

  Mrs Grant put her hand on my arm. ‘No one could cure her, Maggie. It wasn’t something that could be stopped.’

  ‘I could have stopped it. I could have found someone. Been here… She was young, she didn’t have to die. Why did you not send for me? Fetch me home? I could have…’

  What could I have?

  Pa turned his head to the window, staring out, great shoulders hunched. ‘It’s as I’ve said. You’re to go back to your work. It’s what your ma wanted. This is not your home any more.’

  Everyone was very kind in the office. Miss Sylvia said I should take time off if I needed to, but I did not. I wanted to be working. Miss Christabel said that was sensible of me and kept me harder at it than ever. Night and day, fighting, writing, agitating, up and down the country, always on the move. Not thinking.

  I sent money now. Did not visit. I wrote to Mrs Grant, always with a little note for Evelyn and she would send me back a picture or a verse she had learnt and ask when I was coming home. At first I dreaded getting them but after a while I got used to it and what had been a cut became a graze.

  And we were so busy.

  Mr Hardie speaks every day in the House of the torture, asking how in a civilised country such savagery can be allowed. It seems now they are using tubes which they force down the prisoner’s nostrils and pump food into her that way. I have met women who have suffered this. Though they smile and try to make light of it, I can see how dreadful is their suffering. Their noses are swollen and so inflamed they can hardly breathe but rather snuffle, and their eyes are shot with blood from retching. They cannot swallow and their hands shake continually. Their voices are tired and crackling. And yet they go on and on.

  Mrs Pankhurst looks quite ashen. I think she fears we are going to lose the battle after all, for how can we fight barbarians? And it is barbarians that rule this country. Always she has told us that human life is sacred. All human life. So, though we are beaten and abused, we may not strike back. ‘Our weapons are not those of the gun, the whip, the truncheon. Our only armour is the truth, our shield, the justice of our cause.’

  I asked Miss Christabel if we might not even defend ourselves, for I am a fine fighter now and can kick a pillow half across a room. She said, no, for then we should lose the support of the public. I thought, well, much good this support has done us so far. We are no more than a circus show to them. They may shake their heads and cry ‘Shame’ but which one of them sleeps less sound for knowing a woman is being slammed to the stone floor of a cell and pumped full of slush?

  Every day I send out posters showing the awful deed. The papers, too, are full of it. Pictures, plays, protests. And through all this Mr Gladstone stands up and jokes. He says there is no serious harm can come from force-feeding, and besides, the remedy is in our own hands. He cannot understand what all the fuss is about.

  I have walked four hours round Lambeth to collect signatures from doctors to say it must be stopped. That it is dangerous to the health, inhuman, cruel. All were from home when I called. It is the same wherever you go. No one will speak the truth – that women are being tortured in the name of the law. I think they are waiting for one of us to die. Well, if it is me, what good will that do, for I am no one? And it will not be me, for I dare not go through it again. I do anything, everything, to keep myself safe from arrest. I will stay at my desk till midnight and be back again by seven. Miss Sylvia says I must not work such hours, but Miss Christabel applauds it.

  Last night Fred came round to take me to the playhouse. He had saved up specially for the tickets, as it was a piece by Mr George Bernard Shaw, and he knows how much I admire him. I wore my beautiful blue shawl, but for all its finery I looked like a bag of bones. I fell asleep after ten minutes. Fred took me home at the interval. He said it was no matter, but I could see how much I had pained him. I hate myself for being so useless. I cannot look pretty in my best clothes. I cannot stay awake in a comedy. What is the point of me at all?

  Mrs Garrud says I am burning the candle at both ends. Fred says I am wearing myself into the ground, and he is right. They do not know the reason. That I cannot face the agony again. I will do anything to avoid it.

  Miss Christabel has called for volunteers to go to Newcastle. The Lloyd George man is to address a Liberal meeting. Needless to say, first off the starter’s post was Miss Davison who is turning quite purple with frustration at not being arrested. She told me she practises force-feeding herself every evening before she goes to bed. I suppose this means pushing a strawberry down her throat without biting, for her skin is as clear as ever and her voice as loud.

  Lady Con has again offered herself. Truly she is a brave creature for I believe her fear is as terrible as ever, yet she refuses to yield to it. Surely that is greater courage than to rush blindly into battle, caring only for glory and your picture in the paper? Indeed, I think her photograph on the front page would be a worse punishment far than the two or three days she spends in Holloway each time she comes before the court.

  Nobs are not like other people. Once when she was in the cells, the matron came and said it was time to get ready for court, but the bobbies would not depart. Miss Sylvia told me Lady Con stripped right down to her waist and washed in front of them. I would rather die. She also told me Lady Con has carved a ‘V’ on her chest for ‘Votes’ or maybe ‘Victory’. Surely that must have hurt most terribly?

  I have never seen a woman’s chest except my own, and Ma’s when she was feeding and after she died. Mrs Beckett said they were sinful and we should never ever speak about them. Reverend Beckett said they were God’s gift and should be valued above all else. He licked mine to show how much God loved me. I know now how much God loves me and it is not worth the licking.

  Miss Christabel has asked me to be part of the protest. She came to the office one evening when everyone had gone. I was preparing Votes For Women for the printers. She asked me whether I should not like to write an article to appear in it. I said I did not think I could.

  ‘Why not? You are as literate as half the women in the movement now and that without the benefit of proper schooling. It would give great heart to others such as yourself if you could.’

  ‘Well, I will gladly try if you would like me to.’

  ‘Ah, but what shall you write about, do you think?’

  I supposed I should try to tell about my work.

  ‘Yes, yes, but office work is office work, although you do it very well. I was thinking of something more…vigorous.
’

  ‘Like my fighting lessons, you mean?’

  ‘You could mention that, certainly. It would be no bad thing if more of our women learnt the art. But, as you know, Maggie, the vital issue now is our battle against force-feeding. I would like you to give an account of your own experiences.’ I felt cold all over for I have struggled so hard to forget them.

  ‘What do you think about that?’

  I knew there was no choice. ‘I will try, if that is what you wish, Miss Christabel.’

  ‘Excellent. I am sure you will do it very well, although since it is such a long time since you were last in prison and the methods have been changed, do you not think it would be a good idea if you were to join the others up in Newcastle? That way it will be fresh in your mind.’

  My voice went from me. I could not speak. Miss Christabel was smiling, her head tilted in that quizzical way that makes her every request seem reason itself. ‘Of course, Maggie, as you know, there is no compulsion on you to offer yourself for imprisonment. Everyone will understand if you do not feel yourself up to the task, and though it is for working women above all we are fighting, it is a fact that few of them show the strength and dedication needed for such sacrifice.’ At the door she turned. ‘I had always believed you one of those very few.’

  I suppose I should be glad. I was stood outside the Palace Theatre in Newcastle waiting for the Lloyd George, four stones in my pocket, each wrapped in a message of defiance. Not five feet from me is Lady Con, Mrs Brailsford, wife of a famous newsman, and next to her Miss Davison, positively hopping with excitement. Suddenly from far away round the other side we hear a cheer. He has only gone round the back to save himself a meeting with us.

  I felt quite sick with relief but, of course, there is no relief in this struggle. Up sweeps another fine black motor. I saw Lady Con step out in front of it, shouting at those inside that they should cease to torture innocent women. Next goes her stone, right past the door and never a scratch.

  Miss Davison is struggling to find her pebbles but she is so worked up she drops them all over the pavement and goes scrabbling after them round people’s ankles.

  I thought, I could drop mine likewise and no one will know the better, but then I thought, is this what Miss Christabel means when she says the poor have no stomach for a fight? Am I to be her proof?

  I took the biggest flint in my pouch and flung it with all my might. Straight into the little grating on the front. There was a terrible scrunching sound and the car stopped dead. Out got a man with a great twizzly moustache, curled enough to feed him down his own nose, I remember thinking. He looked mighty angry. Anyone would think it was him I had struck, and not a silly hunk of metal.

  Off to the cells. It was a filthy place, the worst I have seen, and at midnight came all the drunks from the alehouses and piled in next door to us, singing, shouting – fortunately their accents were so strange we could not fathom what they were saying, though I am sure it was not for the ears of Lady Con.

  One month in the third division, which for Lady Con and Mrs Brailsford means three days in the second. For the rest of us! I wonder that I thought the last time bad. I knew nothing, suffered nothing to this torture. And Miss Christabel asks me to write of it.

  How? Where are the words?

  Handcuffed, my arms behind my back; dragged by my hair along stone passages; flung down steps, knelt on, slapped, head ripped back and clamped between two vicious fists. My mouth torn open with metal pegs, stretched till my lips split like rotten fruit. Wedged apart. And then the tube. A great snaking coil of filthy vomit-stained rubber crawling down my throat, swallowing me up. Fighting for breath, retching, choking. A distant desolate shriek that comes from outside of me but is me, is all that is left of me. The slurp of the curdled slops plopping into the tube. The daggers of light screaming towards me, the iron band tightening round my brain. How do I write about that?

  Miss Christabel says never mind. She does not need the article now. Lady Con has written most movingly of her experiences in prison. She will use that instead.

  Another election. The Commons have quarrelled with the Lords over taxes. I suppose we do not pay enough to keep them in their scarlet robes and carriages and castles? I have been sent up to Manchester to help with the campaigning.

  Fred came to see me off at the station, but though he squeezed my hand like he would like to take it home with him, he did not kiss me. His eyes were dark and anxious. I waved and waved as the train drew out, but he did not wave back. Just stood and watched till I was out of sight.

  I was to go first to the City Hall to hand out pamphlets but news came as I arrived, the speaker was delayed. The organiser was near frantic. ‘Someone must speak. We have three hundred out there. Promised a London speaker. We cannot fail them at this late stage.’ All eyes turned to me.

  ‘I cannot do it,’ I stammered, quite stiff with terror. ‘I have never spoke to more than ten, and that very badly. I would not know where to begin.’

  ‘Why have you come then?’ asked one fierce-looking woman with a twitchy eye.

  ‘To help. That’s all. To help.’

  ‘Well then, help,’ she roared and the very platform quaked beneath me. I wonder any politician can deny these northern women!

  At half past seven the curtains on the stage were drawn back and there below us was a sea of faces – men, women, nobs (not many) – just faces for as far as you could see.

  There were four of us at the table, the organiser, her assistant, the fierce woman and me. One by one they spoke. There was much clapping and stamping for the fierce woman who told how she had tipped a pint of beer over the head of a local councillor when he dared to suggest she was not his equal. Indeed she could have led an unarmed army into battle I believe, for none would have dared refuse her. At last she finished and after more cheering, the hall fell quiet. The organiser rose. ‘Tonight we have a speaker all the way from London to bring us news of our esteemed leader, Mrs Pankhurst and her valiant daughters, and to tell us how the campaign is going down there.’ Cheers. ‘I ask you to welcome Miss Maggie Robins.’

  Clapping. I climbed to my feet, legs of jelly, hands shaking, no breath inside me, my mind as blank as it had been wiped with Mrs Beckett’s chalk rag.

  ‘Good evening. I have come up from London today.’ Silence.

  A lone man’s voice. ‘Why, chuck?’ Great gales of laughter. When at last it died away, I tried again.

  ‘I have worked in our office at Lincoln’s Inn for…a long time.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Off they go again. The organiser is looking desperate.

  ‘Get on with it,’ yells another.

  The fierce woman is on her feet. ‘It makes you wonder why they send ‘em to us. Done nothing. Knows nothing. Comes here to tell us what’s what.’

  Wild cheers and whoops. Slow handclap for me.

  I looked out at their grinning faces and back at hers, so sure, so full of scorn.

  ‘You are right,’ I replied. ‘I know nothing, I have done nothing, because I am nothing. I am nothing because whatever I do, whatever I learn, whatever I try to pass on to others, counts as nothing as long as I have no voice, no choice in what I become, in how my life is governed, in how my life is lived. I am nothing. And so are all of you.

  ‘Do you not see what it is like to be faceless, without a voice, without the right to decide your own destiny? To be nothing – less than animals, yet expected to work, to pay taxes, to drag out your miserable lives in the service of the rich and powerful? What reason have they to change the laws for our sakes? What good will it do a fat man with money in a bank to share it with the starving at his doorstep?’

  I heard a faint ‘Hear, hear,’ from near the back.

  I went on, ‘This lady is right. I am young, I am ignorant. I have no right to be here, but I am. All I can offer you is my beliefs. That women are not animals. Should not be treated as such. Should be free as men to choose who governs them and how. You ask, ‘What have I done?�
� I have failed. Failed, because men – doctors, they call themselves, who are meant to heal the sick not torture them, have thrust rubber piping down my throat and poured stinking rubbish through it into my belly. And I could not stop them.’

  Silence.

  ‘I have thrown stones at windows and missed, every single time.’

  Laughter.

  ‘I have had Men of God tell me I must burn in hell for wanting justice.’

  ‘God bless you, girl,’ came a voice.

  Everyone cheered.

  ‘I have lost the person I loved best in all the world to an illness the rich could cure but the poor could not. Because the poor are nothing.’

  Fred was waiting for me on the platform. He looked happier than when he had seen me off, but still not the Fred I knew and loved the best. He kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘Well, now you are famous, Maggie.’

  ‘How “famous”? What do you mean?’

  He pulled a newspaper from inside his coat. I could scarce believe it. There, on the front page was a photograph of me, my fist in the air (I cannot remember raising it). NO LONGER NOTHING ran the headline and, beneath the picture, an account of my speech. ‘Grown men weeping’, it said. Well, I thought that a bit foolish for those that did had been drunk, but all the same I felt a great warm glow flooding through me.

  ‘I wonder if Miss Christabel has seen it.’

  Fred glanced at me, his eyes weary. ‘I’m sure she has,’ he said.

  ‘I hope so. I do hope so.’

  ‘Why? So she can send you on even more dangerous missions? Your imprisonment will be worth much more to her now people know who you are.’

  I felt shocked right through. ‘That is a wicked thing to say.’

  ‘Is it? True, though, I’ll warrant.’

  I did not know what to make of his remarks. I said, ‘Are you angry with me for having my picture taken? I did not know they were doing it, I can promise you, or I would have worn my yellow blouse.’ We stood there glaring at each other in the middle of the platform. A porter struggled by with a trunk on his back.