Authors: Janet MacLeod Trotter
Maggie gazed into the solemn eyes and knew at once that her daughter was strong and resilient and must have a name that would match her own unique character.
‘Christabel,’ Maggie said, her mind made up, ‘like Mrs Pankhurst’s daughter.’
Millie cackled with delight. ‘Another wee fighter, eh, bonny lass?’
‘She’ll need to be,’ Maggie smiled sadly, leaning forward and kissing Christabel lovingly on her head of matted dark hair. The baby stopped her quavering cry and began to make small smacking sounds with her tiny lips.
Suddenly Maggie felt her body seized by convulsions again. ‘Please God, no!’ she whimpered.
Millie was at her side at once, gripping her shoulder.
‘It’s just the afterbirth, hinny. Nowt to worry over,’ she reassured her.
‘I must take the baby away now,’ the midwife said abruptly, shaking off her discomfort at the intimate scene she had just witnessed.
Maggie cuddled her daughter tightly to her in fear.
‘Leave them be the night!’ Millie rounded on the woman and took Christabel protectively while the afterbirth was ejected from Maggie’s womb.
The attendant, weary of battling with the defiant pair, bundled up the waste in the soggy brown paper and took it with her to be burned.
‘I’ll be back before Matron comes round,’ she warned as she left.
Millie returned Christabel to her mother.
‘Here, why don’t you try and feed her - she’s clammin’ for a bit feed.’
‘Show me,’ Maggie urged, pulling her gown free.
Millie saw her friend was too weak to sit up, so she guided her onto her side and snuggled the baby in beside her. She helped the baby onto Maggie’s small round breast, gently prising open the searching mouth. Within seconds the hungry infant had latched onto Maggie and begun an instinctive sucking.
Maggie watched in wonder, weak but elated. She stroked her daughter’s cheek and felt an answering enthusiasm in her sucking. She had never imagined that such overwhelming happiness could spring from the simple, mundane act of feeding. Maggie gazed at her baby and felt love for her flooding every inch of her battered being. Never before had she loved so unconditionally or completely, Maggie thought, trembling at the realisation.
In that dismal, badly lit cell, still smelling of the stench of childbirth, Maggie wept with exhaustion and joy and love and trepidation. She looked at the sweet contented face at her breast and cuddled her closer still.
‘My Christabel,’ she whispered in wonder, kissing her again.
Millie sniffed and Maggie glanced up to see her friend was crying.
‘We’ll change the world together, me and Christabel,’ Maggie smiled. ‘She’s already changed mine, anyways.’
She saw Millie wipe her nose vigorously on her sleeve and then Maggie closed her eyes, weary beyond words, but content, fulfilled. She fell asleep still feeling the rhythmic trusting tug of her daughter’s suckling.
It was daylight when she woke. Grey light seeped in at the high barred window above her bed. Every inch of her ached and Maggie thought for a moment she was back in prison.
Then she remembered.
She turned on her side to find the space beside her empty and cold. She could still smell her, but Christabel was gone. Maggie tried to move, seized by panic, but the pain that shot down her back and between her legs was paralysing. She could see blood seeping into the blanket - her blood.
The room was empty. I’m dying, Maggie thought numbly. They have left me to die. Then a far worse pain gripped her and caused her to cry out in agony.
‘Christabel!’ she screamed. ‘Millie! They’ve taken my baby!
’
Maggie lay for weeks in a dingy dormitory recovering from the birth, hardly aware of the bleak empty winter days. The ward was filled with old women who babbled to themselves and wet the floor in their confusion, while Maggie lay on a corner bed with her face to the wall and gave in to her deep despair. She had nothing left to live for. Relentlessly fate had taken everything from her - her father, her mother, Granny Beaton, her beloved George; even her suffragist cause was dead. And finally they had taken from her the only precious thing that she had to call her own, her sweet daughter Christabel. Her physical pain was nothing compared to her mental torment and she seemed content to waste away in that cold, stinking, disinfected ward for abandoned old and insane paupers.
Her grip on life would have loosened faster if it had not been for the interference of the old whore Millie Dobson. From time to time Maggie was aware of Millie snatching moments at her bedside while under orders to scrub down the floor. Her craggy, bulbous face would peer over her in concern and speak softly. Maggie remembered little of what she said, only that the tone was gentle compared to the sharp barks from Matron or the disinterested grunts from the pauper nurses.
‘You must get your strength back, hinny,’ Millie encouraged. ‘You lost a lot of blood after the birth and they had to stitch you up like a burst pillow. That doctor should swing for what he done to you, hinny. I could tell he hadn’t the first idea what to do. Should’ve left it to us women.’ Millie held her hand. ‘It’s no surprise you cannot walk. But don’t let them bully you, hinny, you’ll be back on your feet when that poor body of yours is fully rested. I’ll bring you summat extra to eat the night.’
Maggie lay half listening, her eyes staring out at the blank pale green wall, not caring if she never walked again. She had grown used to the excruciating ache in her back that throbbed whichever way she lay and the searing pain between her legs when she tried to urinate.
Perhaps the Matron was right, Maggie thought listlessly, and her suffering was her own fault, brought on by her wickedness. In the workhouse they called her proud and sinful and told her that God was punishing her for her past selfish life. When she had screamed for her daughter, they had slapped her and told her she would never be allowed near the child, for fear the girl would turn out the same.
‘As it is, there’ll be badness running through that child!’ Matron had prophesied. ‘Her only hope is to be brought up strict by godly folk - aye, and kept away from the likes of you.’
‘
What’s left for me?’ Maggie had whispered in desolation.
‘You?’ Matron had snorted. ‘You’re beyond saving.’
Maggie had felt her spirit shrivel at the woman’s cold judgment and began to wonder if what she said was true. Had she really been too proud and stubborn in her life, too sinful? Had her persistence and defiance in the name of suffragism been a monstrous show of arrogance and ungodliness? The Master and Matron of St Chad’s firmly believed so and the spawning of a bastard child was merely confirmation of her deep wickedness. They held out no hope for her and swiftly Maggie had sunk into a blackness that surpassed even what she had experienced in prison.
A worried Millie came and stood over her as she lay motionless and gaunt on the narrow bed and did not cry for her stolen baby. She was frightened that Maggie had lost the will to live and she fretted as to what to do for her friend. For Millie had grown fond of the strident, humorous, spirited girl who had befriended her in this grim fortress when others had shunned her. Now, more than ever, she needed Maggie; this past month she had gained much comfort from being near her and she was determined she would not lose Maggie.
One early spring day at the end of February, Millie sneaked into the workhouse garden and plucked a small bunch of crocuses. She found Maggie curled up on her bed, her cropped black hair limp against her papery skin, her eyes huge and hollowed. Millie realised with shock that Maggie was quite deliberately starving herself to death, this time not for any great cause but because she had lost all her causes.
‘Look,’ Millie said, thrusting the small delicate flowers under Maggie’s pinched nose. ‘Spring’s here.’
Maggie closed her eyes.
‘Thought you’d like ’em - being your colours, hinny.’
Maggie’s eyes opened again, but her look was vacant.
‘Purple and white, with green stems,’ Millie persisted. ‘You know, suffragette colours.’
Maggie stared at them for a long while as if trying to remember something. Millie was not sure, but she thought she detected a glistening in the young woman’s eyes. Maggie’s lips opened and mouthed a silent thank you, but she did not attempt to take the flowers and her grey eyes retreated behind hooded lids.
Millie shook her gently. ‘Listen, hinny, it’s time you stopped your grieving and started to take a bit more interest in things. You’re nowt but skin and bone. You’ve got to get your strength back, hinny.’
Maggie opened her eyes. ‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘I’ve nowt to live for.’
Millie was suddenly very afraid. She was losing Maggie and the truth made her angry. Millie seized her friend’s bony shoulders and shook her so that the iron bedstead squealed.
‘How can you say that?’ Millie demanded. ‘Your daughter is alive somewhere and being looked after, even if it’s not by you.’
Maggie looked startled by the sudden violence in her voice. She raised her head from the pillow. ‘She might as well be dead,’ she answered bleakly, ‘for I’ll never see her again.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Millie cried. ‘You said you were going to fight for her. Well, where’s the fight in you now, ’cos I can’t see it?’
Maggie tried to turn her head away. ‘Just leave me alone, won’t you? Go and bother someone else.’
Millie leaned over and spoke inches from her face. ‘I don’t have anyone else,’ she hissed. ‘Annie died a month ago and now you’re the only family I’ve got! Don’t you die on me as well, you little bugger!’
Maggie’s face went tense with shock. ‘Annie?’ she gasped. ‘Dead?’
Millie nodded, unwanted tears pricking her eyes. She was breathing hard and could not trust herself to speak again.
Suddenly Maggie’s face crumpled like a small child’s as it dawned on her that Millie had lost her only daughter too, finally, irrevocably lost her. She had been far too deep in her own grief even to think about asking after Annie and now it was too late.
Wordlessly, Maggie reached up and put her arms about the desolate woman in an attempt to comfort her and felt the sturdy arms grip her with an answering warmth. In that bleak dormitory they clung to each other and wept their pent-up tears until the noise brought shouts from the other patients and a stern reprimand from the attendant in charge.
‘Hoy, you!’ the woman shouted. ‘Get away from her.’
‘I’m that sorry,’ Maggie sniffed as Millie pulled away. Millie nodded.
Maggie looked down and saw the crocuses had been crushed. She picked them up and kissed them. The two women looked at each other in silent understanding.
‘You’ll not give up the fight, will you?’ Millie whispered as the nurse marched up the ward to remove her. ‘For little Christabel - for all us lasses?’
‘“Freedom’s cause till death!”’ Maggie croaked a snatch of the suffragette march with a weak smile.
Millie was hauled away, leaving Maggie shaking and tearful on the bed. But as Millie glanced back at the door, she saw with triumph that Maggie had swung her feeble legs over the side of the bed and was contemplating trying to stand.
***
It was many weeks before Maggie walked and months before she was fit enough to carry out menial tasks around the workhouse. Yet that day in February, when Millie’s robust kindness had penetrated her blackness, had been a turning point. Maggie pulled back from the abyss and determined to carry on living.
At twenty-four she had the creaking body of a much older woman and the limp she had acquired as a result of the brutal birth appeared permanent. But by the end of the year she was able to work in the kitchens, peeling vegetables and scrubbing tables and sneaking out scraps of food to Millie. The two were inseparable, sharing their meals and jokes among the simple and senile, trying to keep up their spirits in their imprisonment.
Their meals had become increasingly meagre as the effects of rationing and hardship from years of war took their toll. Inside the workhouse it was possible to live from day to day as if there was no war in France, so narrow was their existence. Yet Maggie noticed the changes - the decrease in the number of men catered for in the kitchens, the drop in numbers of vagrants seeking a night’s shelter, the shortage of trained staff and the number of women inmates working the gardens. Most obvious was the deterioration in rations - the absence of any meat, the tasteless bread, the thinness of the porridge and the scarcity of sugar.
On New Year’s Eve 1917, Millie became maudlin on the bottle of beer Maggie had smuggled out of the kitchen to celebrate the new Reform Bill, giving the vote to women over thirty.
‘Votes for women at last!’ Maggie toasted the news.
‘You still can’t vote, mind,’ Millie reminded her. ‘You’re too young.’
‘Aye, but it’s a step forward,’ Maggie insisted. ‘We’re being listened to at last.’ She took a triumphant swig and passed the bottle back to her friend.
‘Nineteen eighteen,’ Millie sighed. ‘What’ll it bring? An end to the Kaiser’s war and bad food?’
‘Maybes revolution, like in Russia,’ Maggie speculated. ‘People can only take so much of butchery and hard labour and going without. They see their men being killed off and their bairns dying of lack of food and the bosses have still got it all their own way. Folk won’t put up with that for ever.’
‘Hush!’ Millie ordered. ‘Don’t let the Kaisers round here catch you talking of revolution.’
Maggie pulled a face and took another sip from Millie’s bottle. ‘George would have been celebratin’ the workers’ overthrow in Russia, so why shouldn’t I?’
Suddenly Millie put an arm about her. ‘You still miss that lad of yours?’
Maggie set her face grimly. ‘I don’t think about him anymore, he’s in the past. Mind, I still worry for me brother Jimmy.’ All she knew was that he had survived the summer battles on the Somme, for a postcard had arrived the day she was evicted from Hibbs’ Farm. But that was an age ago and all she could do was pray for his safety. ‘No, the only thing I want out of nineteen eighteen is to have me bairn back, and I don’t even know where they’ve taken her.’