Crooked Pieces (30 page)

‘I will prepare one for you when you are ready.’

‘Oh… Thank you.’

‘And shall you like me to help you dress after, miss?’

I do not know what my expression must have been. ‘No, thank you. I can do that. I used to be a maid.’ She looked up at me so strangely. ‘I know what you are thinking,’ I blathered. ‘You are thinking that cannot be true.’

The girl blushed. ‘No, miss, truly. I was just wondering…’

‘What?’

‘Why anyone who could have been a maid would want to do what you do.’

As I lay in my bath I thought, if only you knew.

The days have flown by. I have put on near all the weight I lost and if I keep this up I shall need a wagon to take me back to London, not a car. I have written to Fred every day. I had hoped to have a reply from him, but I expect he is very busy. I have had two goes on the swing. It is the best feeling in the world to sway backwards and forwards with the sun on your back and a warm soft wind in your face. That must be how angels feel when they are flying.

I have read four books of poems, one about a king called Arthur who lived at a magic time and had a round table where all his noble knights sat, so that no one could be greater than the others. We could do with a round table at some suffragette meetings, I am thinking, for there is a load of arguing goes on about who is in charge of who, although in the end, the knights quarrelled anyway and poor Arthur died and went away in a barge with three wailing queens.

I have committed six poems to heart. I could not learn all
the prison one for it is twelve pages long, but I know a good few verses.

Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence stayed the weekend and Miss Sylvia came down on Saturday and we all played tennis. It is a wonderful game although I do not understand the rules one bit. Mr Pethick Lawrence was my partner and Mrs Pethick Lawrence and Miss Sylvia were against us. We won by miles. Miss Sylvia is a bit soppy at running and Mrs Pethick Lawrence could not find her eye-glasses.

Then we had lemonade and sat under the trees to cool down and everyone said how well I looked, and how they were looking forward to having me back in the office. I said I was quite well enough to return but they said, no, a few more days would do me no harm, so here I am, feet up, book on my lap, sun in my hair. Maggie Robins, the Queen of Camelot. Oh, for my knight in shining armour.

And he has come. The maid, whose name is Lucy! came hurrying out to the summer-house at half past ten this morning to say a young man had called and should she send him out or would I like to receive him in the drawing-room? Well, I beat her back for I rushed across that lawn like I was shot from a bow. Through the drawing-room, the library and straight out into the hall. Fred was standing with his back to me, studying a painting, light streaming on to him through the stained-glass window. His hair was full of flames. I just gazed. He turned and his whole face lit up like diamond sparks, mystic, wonderful. He held out his arms. ‘Maggie…’

I think the maid was a bit shocked. I cannot help that. Queen Guinevere was just as forward when Sir Lancelot
returned from seeking the Holy Grail. I think he was gone a bit longer than two weeks but it seemed like forever to me and anyway she didn’t have to watch.

This has been the most perfect day. Mrs Cliffe asked if we would like to eat lunch (dinner) in the dining-room or should she pack us a picnic to take down to the lake?

We sat by the water’s edge and Fred took off his shoes and socks and dipped his feet in, so I did, too, and after I had given over screaming for it was so cold, it was quite lovely. Fred tried to catch my foot between his own and we had such a tussle that I nearly fell in and had to smack him (but not hard) and he caught hold of my hand and kissed it, then my arm, then my shoulder, my neck…so now I am nearly a woman again. Oh, he is so lovely.

I told him about King Arthur. He knew of him already and agreed that he was quite the best king who ever reigned in our country. I asked him if he thought women would have had the vote in Arthur’s time. He smiled and rolled on his back so that all his muscles sort of rippled like a beautiful wave. ‘They wouldn’t have needed it, Maggie. The men were theirs to command.’

‘Are you mine to command?’

He reached up with his hand and touched the skin of my neck so it tingled like a firework bursting. ‘You know I am.’

I lay down beside him. ‘Well, that’s not fair. We must be equal. That is what I am fighting for.’

He tickled my nose with a piece of grass. ‘
You
are, Maggie. I would not vouch for your fellows.’ I would have questioned him about that but he seemed to think kissing would be better.

After tea he had to catch a train back to London.

He said he had received all my letters and had started to answer each one of them but could not get his thoughts out, so that is why he came to see me. I said I should be home soon for I could not bear to be away from him much longer. He made me promise that I would stay as long as I was ordered. I said, ‘Why? Am I still too ugly to come back?’

He shook his head. ‘But if I could, I would keep you here forever.’ He didn’t say why.

Happy. Today I am perfectly happy. I must remember how this feels in case I ever lose it.

All summer long the war has continued, for it is a war now. We can no longer pretend that fine words and promises mean a thing. There will be no vote for us until the Asquith and all his slimy kind have been beaten.

They complain that we challenge them at church, at dinner, when they are on holiday, but if they will not receive us in the proper place, what can we do? They cannot ignore our demands and expect us to respect theirs. Anyway, now they must go around with an army to shield them. Sneaking in and out of their meetings, scurrying away into the night like sewer rats. And so we go on with our protests: window smashing, taunting the politicians, storming Liberal assemblies. Paying the price. And the price is always prison. Prison, then hunger strike. Recovery, protest, prison. On and on.

Some days I think I shall run mad. For where is it getting us, all this endless rebellion? I see women in the street, in the shops, through the windows of their homes, going about their business without a single care or thought for the struggle we are engaged in. Sometimes I want to cry out, ‘Look at me. See what they are doing to me. Look at my hair, my skin, my
bones sticking through my garments. And it is for
you
. For you and your children. Why can you not stand by us? Why do you turn your backs?’ And then I think, they look so calm, so peaceful, so contented. Perhaps they do not need the vote after all. Women have lived for thousands of years without it. Why should they want it now? Besides, people do not welcome change, it seems to me, for I have only to move the chairs around in the office for everyone to start fretting and moaning about how much better it was before.

Before. What is this magical ‘before’ when everything was fine and no one went hungry or died or got beaten with a truncheon? When did it exist? I think, never, unless in a poem like King Arthur and his knights. But we must not think of ‘before’. Only of the future. Tomorrow, when we have won. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Mrs Pankhurst is forbidden to go on any more deputations till the courts have ruled on what to charge her with. For once they have not found a law yet to counter her.

The Women’s Freedom League has taken over the protests. Perhaps it is as well they do it, for so many of us are so wrecked we have no longer the strength for such a thing. Once fine strong women trudge about like crones, dull-eyed, aching, frozen – always frozen. I would rather fall in the Thames in darkest winter than lie on a Holloway plank with no food inside me. It is like a block of freezing iron binding my ribs to my backbone. Sometimes I think my soul will fall out the other side. There is no blood flowing beneath my skin. Everything is frozen.

I have been hungry before. At home there was never enough to fill us all, and Pa and my brothers got first pickings, but even
at the worst times it was never like this. This endless starving of ourselves. It is so contrary to everything that life should be. To turn your back on nourishment, on all you need to live and keep on living. To watch your body failing bit by bit. My bleeding has quite stopped now but there is no baby in me, that I know. I told Miss Annie. She said hers had, too. It was a ‘side effect’. ‘Side effects’, it seems, are little fiddling nuisances that can occur as a result of certain actions. ‘Like getting your skirt splashed if you stand too near the gutter on a wet day,’ she explained. I wondered if losing your hair and your eyelashes and being able to count each rib in your body were side effects, too.

One day as I was sitting in the park waiting for Fred to come off duty, a mother came by with her little girl, about four years old, I would guess. They stopped right near me and brought out a bag of crumbs to feed the ducks. As the child took hold of it, the bag split open and half the bread spilt on the ground so I bent down to help her pick it up, but when I held it out to her, she screamed and ran behind her mother’s skirts, and would not come out till I had moved away. I heard the woman soothing her. ‘No, no, Emily. She’s not a witch. It’s just the way she looks.’

I fled home, scurrying along the pavements, eyes down, scarf round my head to hide my horrible face. Still I could see my scraggy fingers gnawing at my coat buttons. Once I glanced in a shop window and there I was, one, two, three of me. Three witches scuttling like rats to find a hole to hide in.

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 chair 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?