A Time for Courage (39 page)

Hannah looked again for Esther’s hat but she could not see it. She fingered the brooch which was in the pocket of her jacket, picturing the portcullis emblazoned with a broad arrow in suffragette colours with silver chains hanging either side. She should have given Esther this one and then she would not have come tonight. It was wrong of her to have allowed it; Harry would never forgive her if his love was hurt, but at the same time it was good to feel that she was not in the hall alone.

She would not think of anything beyond the next words of the Minister, she would not think of the men who would grab her, pull and push and hit her. And then she saw the Minister lift his glass and she took her hand from her pocket and gripped the flag which she had carried in under her jacket. All she could hear was her heart beating in her throat. It was too loud, it would stop her voice. She could not do it. She must not stand and find she had no voice. She could not stand, her legs were too weak. She watched as the Minister took another sip, smiling at the men who sat beside him on the stage, and then his glass was going down towards the table. It would be too late if she did not rise now. She was going to fail her friends; there were so many people and she was so afraid.

And then she was up and holding the flag, waving its green and white and purple colours and her voice was strong as she called on the Minister to support votes for women.

Again and again she called. ‘Will you pledge your support for women’s suffrage?’ But there was no answer to her question. He just stood and continued with his speech while the audience turned on her and shouted her down. The hatred was all around her, in the fists that waved and the mouths that opened and shut with curses and the fear was too great to be borne, but once more she shouted across the hostile rows.

‘Please will you pledge your support?’

But her voice was weaker now and the flag was torn from her hands by the large man who no longer sat at her side but stood pushing her down. She struggled free.

‘Please pledge your support,’ she called once more across the hostility which shocked her, frightened her, and made her think of meal-times with her father and she called on the anger she had used then to subdue the fear.

She felt a man push her from behind but she shouted once more above the noise.

‘When will you consider votes for women?’ Her voice was strong with anger and she said it again as the audience shouted and cheered the stewards who pushed down the row and held her, one either side, and dragged her past the people who had smiled and made way for her earlier. Now one spat in her face and as they reached the aisle she went limp as she had been instructed and so the stewards had to drag her to the exit and another glob of spittle landed wet on her face and another down her black jacket. Her hat was ripped from her head, her hair was torn from its pins. She could not hear Esther. Why had she not begun? Did it mean that she was not here, that Hannah was completely alone? And fear took the place of anger again for now the fury would be directed at her alone. But where was Esther?

As the stewards backed through the swing-doors into the lobby they threw her to the floor and her head struck the black marble tiles, but she was not aware of pain, only of the white flecks in the tiles. She would not get up so they dragged her by her arms, face down, out into the street, bumping her limp body down the steps and her knees bled from the rasping of the concrete which tore her stockings and her skin.

The police had not come yet but men had, from the hall and from the alleys where they often waited, and they pushed the stewards to one side. They loomed over her, their mufflers at their throats to keep out the Easter chill. They shut out the light from the hall, with their great bodies. Their faces were smiling but their voices were low and vicious.

She had known it would be worse not being with all her friends, being just two against the men. She turned and looked back at the entrance. Where was Esther? There were too many for just one woman. She stood now, her hands gripping her skirt, looking around for the stewards, for the police, but there was no one but these men. The same sort of men who had let in the rats, beaten them with staves.

Then one slapped her face with his open palm and she thought her neck would snap with the blow. She tasted blood and knew it coated her teeth.

She bent her head and heard the large dark man say, ‘Bitch. You leave women as they be.’ She felt a hand in her hair winding round and round but she would not lift her head and so he pulled harder and she screamed as he tore the roots from her scalp.

Another swung her round, driving his fist into her ribs. ‘You behave like a slut, you get treated like one,’ he said, and his breath was foul and then he spat full in her face and it was this that made her scream again. ‘Esther, where are you?’

‘The coppers are coming,’ a man called and the one who held a clump of her hair in his hand laughed and threw it to the ground and Hannah turned to him and said, ‘That’s mine.’ But her lips were too swollen to move and she looked down at the long strands lying on the ground and she turned and slapped the face which grinned at her and so he knocked her to the ground and kicked her.

‘Get down on the ground with it then, you troublemaker,’ he snarled.

The pavement was cold; she was cold, but her hair was there, not too far away and she moved her fingers and then her hand and finally her arm and it was as though it was someone else that she watched as slowly her hand drew closer and then a boot came down. She felt no pain as she watched the studs press into her flesh and then her bones, but the police-van came and the boot was gone. Her hair was still there though, she had not reached it yet.

The stewards came out again then, just as the policeman lifted her from the ground, but he didn’t understand that she had left her hair on the pavement. She turned from him, from the arm which held her, and he would not let her go but stood there listening to the steward.

‘Let me go,’ she said, because she could not go with him until she had picked up her hair. Didn’t he understand that. ‘Let me go,’ she said again but perhaps it was because her lips were too swollen for him to hear and so she pushed away from him and he held her again and she fought his arms because part of her had been left there on that cold pavement.

He charged her then with assault but that did not matter because as he lifted her into the police-van and sat with her on the bench she could see nothing but that piece of herself which she had allowed that man to take.

She was offered bail, but she did not want it. Suffragettes did not accept bail and so this time she did not go to Frances to have her wounds bathed but sat in the police cell on the wooden bench which was the only furniture in the cold square room. A policeman opened the shutter and said that there was a gentleman offering to pay her bail, would she accept? She refused, banishing the thought of the warm sitting-room and Bess who panted by the hearth. Was it Arthur, she thought, but he was in Norway, salmon fishing, wasn’t he?

She was unhurt, the doctor said, but swabbed her knees, and her mouth and her bleeding scalp.

Frances was not in court the next day because she was teaching but three suffragettes were, Maureen, Ann and Sarah, and with them was Esther.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she mouthed to Hannah, ‘but my father wanted me to stay in for a dinner-party.’

Hannah nodded. She ached too much to think or to feel. She could not smile because her lips hurt too much and her eye was black and swollen. She turned from her cousin. Esther had not meant to let her down, she never did, and what did it matter now anyway? Hannah listened as the magistrate found her guilty and sentenced her to three months in the third division. She had to grip the rail of the dock although her hand was swollen and bruised where the studs had been because she must not show that she minded, that she wanted to crouch and cry and not leave here for that place again.

She made herself lift her head, made the tears stay behind her lids because no one must see how much she was hurting.

Esther stood with her hand to her mouth, her eyes filled with horror, but Maureen smiled. ‘Be brave,’ she mouthed.

Hannah nodded to her and turned away and then she saw him and knew now who it was who had offered to pay her bail. His face was calm and strong. He smiled and she set her shoulders back now that Joe was here and walked upright from the dock, feeling not the plain wooden boards beneath her feet but the spongy moor. As Hannah disappeared down the steps and from the court Joe wondered how he had been able to keep his face still, his eyes calm, when Hannah had looked, for that brief moment, so broken. Her bruises were nothing compared to that.

Hannah entered through gates which were by now familiar but this time she was not with other suffragettes but alone amongst criminals. She did not go to a comfortable cell but was taken with the other women prisoners into a cold square room and together they stripped beside dark, pitted baths. She did not look at the bodies of the other women or listen to the hoarse voices or acknowledge the laughter as she removed her clothes and stood naked before them. She had never seen other bodies before, nor had others seen hers. She thought of her mother’s bedroom, the dressing-table, her pin-boxes, her hat-pins. How many were there? She made herself picture them all and when she was pushed towards the bath by the wardress she began again. When she was dry she thought of Frances and the chairs and the fire and the dog as she put on the thick, rough-textured, dark green dress with its heavy pleats and white arrows and then the dull blue and white checked apron with its black arrows. She tied the frayed strings of the white cap under her chin. The red and black striped stockings were rough and slipped down with each step.

She thought of the moor and the sea and Joe’s apple-loft at Penbrin which he had promised to show her one day when she had the time. She collected a Bible and library book from the wardress’s office and a filthy blanket before entering her dark cell, lit by one small high window, and she felt the breath tightening her chest and her father close to her as the spy-hole in the door slid shut. When would she have the time?

There was no handle on this side of the door and she sat on the plank by the wall and only now did she think of where she was. She looked at the stool and the shelf which was the table; the rolled up straw mattress at the end of the plank on which she was sitting. So this then was the bed.

There were several tins on the shelf and a wooden spoon stood up in one. It was porous and felt slimy to the touch and smelt of other mouths and old food.

That night a wardress brought round gruel and dark bread, pouring it into one of the tins. Her keys were hanging in a bundle from the chain around her waist and they rattled together as she moved. There was no expression in the prison officer’s voice as she said, ‘Eat this, Number 15.’ The woman’s face was colourless against the holland dress and dark blue bonnet.

Hannah could not use the spoon so she drank from the tin. The gruel stung her swollen mouth and she dribbled down her chin on to her dress. She rubbed at it with her hand; she had no handkerchief. She could not eat the bread, it hurt her mouth too much.

The next day she ate porridge and had to use the spoon because it was too thick to pour. She washed her tin and her spoon and scrubbed the floor on her knees and they bled again. She sat in her cell, her back against the wall, because her ribs hurt too much to lie down but she could not rest her head against the cold stone because her scalp was still tender.

Lunch was broth with a piece of meat and tea to drink. One of the girls liked being in prison, she said, when they walked round the exercise yard in the afternoon for half an hour, for at least there was food.

Hannah looked at the sky; it was blue and the clouds scudded over the prison walls and disappeared from sight. She thought of the matchgirl and looked at the woman who liked the prison. She thought she had understood poverty but she had not, she knew that now. She pulled at her dress which had rubbed her neck raw with its roughness. No, she had not understood this world at all, how arrogant to think that she had. She had not felt its roughness, only seen it. Had not tasted meagre food, only seen it. Had not known hopelessness, only seen it.

She sat for hours in her cell and all the time the dress rubbed at her skin and the high walls of the cell closed in around her.

She was allowed one library book and she chose
The History of Mr Polly
and read two pages a day but only two for it must last. So each line she read twice, memorising if she could because it made the minutes pass. She thought of these as the wardress called her out of her cell for exercise, not hearing the clink of keys above the words which she made herself repeat in her mind.

Her lips became less sore, less swollen, but her fingers grew raw and then hard from sewing thick shirts. The days turned to weeks and the weeks to one month and then two. Hannah’s feet had blistered and then hardened where prison shoes which did not fit rubbed as she paced the seven steps it took from wall to wall. She walked it again and again, memorising her pages, not thinking of tomorrow, not thinking of the loneliness, the locked door, the hunger, the wooden spoon, the world outside. Not thinking of Esther who would be teaching her children, walking in the park, boating on the river. Not thinking of the fact that she should have been here too.

Again and again she thought of the matchgirl, the blank eyes, dull hair, the smell. She understood now the effect on the soul of deprivation, of poverty.

As the last month began she grew thin and silent because there were still only walls to look at, not the sky, not houses, not fields, and each morning she emptied the bucket and rolled her bedding. Each evening she drank her grey thin cocoa and would not think of Frances drinking her brown thick brew. She read the letter which came from Arthur saying that he would be thirty in 1914 and his family would like to see him married by then. She was the woman he had chosen, she knew that, he said, and he could wait for her answer, but for no more than another two years. That should give you time to work this cause from your system, he wrote. Hannah had written back saying that she would give him an answer in the summer of 1913 but she felt too tired to say more, to think more. It seemed so unimportant, so distant. Even the words in her mind seemed slow and short.