The Lodger: A Novel (22 page)

When the onlookers realized what was happening, there were angry murmurs of “Shame!” “Shame!” The murmurs soon turned into irate cries and the crowd became a mob: shoving, howling, and brawling. The tumult grated unbearably on Dorothy’s ears. Supporters of the suffragettes cheered them as they tried to force their way, crying “Go on! We’ll push you through”; calling to the police “Let her proceed! She has a right.”

Dorothy saw a woman with blood streaming from a gash above her eyebrow go up to the man with liver sausage eyes; she seemed to be asking for help. He raised his arm and struck her hard across the face. As she stumbled backward, he grasped one of her breasts in a meaty hand and twisted it cruelly. Dorothy saw her face crumple in pain and outrage.

A brawny policeman wrenched a flag from an elderly suffragette, giving her a shove in the chest that nearly pitched her backward. The frail woman cried, “We will go on! You cannot treat women like this.” In response, he punched her in the face; Dorothy heard the sickening crunch of his fist meeting tissue and bone. The suffragette screamed and the man grabbed her by the throat until she began to choke. She struggled uselessly in his grip and was swiftly arrested. Next to them, a woman lay unconscious on the ground.

In rising fear and distress, Dorothy found herself trapped by the crowd that hustled and surged chaotically around her. She had lost sight of Veronica and was trying to find her in the sea of people, but it was almost impossible to push her way through. She felt smothered by the press of strange bodies, and the heat and unbreathable smells they generated: the comingled rankness of many unwashed skins; the reek of sweat cutting through, sharply rancid; a pungent cologne that was almost worse than sweat. The fetid cocktail made her nauseous.

Suddenly, brilliant flashes of light and soft explosions tore through the air, startling her. She looked about, frantic and disoriented; the noise and lights intensified her sense that normal life was melting into surreal nightmare. Eventually, she realized they came from flashlights belonging to a nearby group of newspaper photographers.

The rules holding society together seemed to be collapsing before her eyes; she could scarcely believe that upholders of the law were treating defenseless woman with such brutality. She had never seen women being manhandled by constables before, except, once or twice, drunken women in the street. The disproportionate show of force directed at obviously respectable women, many of them far from young, was deeply shocking. The government seemed determined not only to crush the suffragettes’ demonstration, but to annihilate the hunger for emancipation lying behind it. The very earth seemed to be shifting under Dorothy’s feet, giving a glimpse of dark forces beneath.

At last, Dorothy caught sight of Veronica, locked in combat with a policeman who was grasping her hard by both forearms. Dorothy made her way toward them. Veronica’s cheeks were flushed; her broad white hat was askew and her hair escaped wildly from its pins. Momentarily, she managed to break free. Taking a stone from her pocket, she flung it as hard as she could at the windows of the House of Commons. The stone missed, landing harmlessly on the ground, but a second policeman seized Veronica roughly from behind, pinning her arms against her sides so she couldn’t move. Lifting her off her feet as easily as if she had been a doll, he carried her away.

Veronica’s head lolled back at an awkward angle; her skin was grey and waxy with shock, seeming too tightly drawn over the bones of her face. Her eyes were closed; she looked like she was struggling for breath in the implacable grip of her captor. Her feet flailed helplessly, a few inches from the ground.

Dorothy could no longer quell her growing nausea. Crouching over, she vomited copiously into the gutter; her skin clammy, her breath coming in shallow gasps. When she was able to straighten up and look around, Veronica was nowhere to be seen.

Too ill and weak to attempt a search of the local police stations, Dorothy made her way slowly home. Her legs trembled and she could not feel her feet. A brisk wind had come up; the weather was changing rapidly, growing overcast. As she let herself into Mrs. Baker’s house, a bank of heavy cloud obscured the sun, shrouding the surrounding buildings in gloom.

The rain started when she reached her room. A brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the sky. The crack of thunder that followed made her jump. She was still nauseous; unsure if it was pregnancy or fear for Veronica. Waves of fear were rolling off her body like a smell; her skin was damp with it. She could not sit still.

Outside, a young woman laughed. Dorothy hurried to the window, but it was not Veronica. She watched the woman walk past; she had pale hair, as fine and soft as a child’s. She was holding the arm of a young man; both of them sheltered beneath a large red umbrella.

Dorothy began to pace up and down the small room. The intervals between lightning and thunder were gradually growing longer; the storm was dying away. But the rain was relentless, fat drops plocking onto the roof and windows.

Hardly knowing what she was doing, Dorothy crept downstairs to Veronica’s room and opened the door. The bed was smooth and undisturbed; Veronica’s nightgown had been carelessly tossed onto her pillow. Dorothy lay full length on the bed and put her head on the gown’s soft material. It smelled of Veronica, and Dorothy was instantly undone by longing.

She was trapped in a nightmare; unable to stop reliving the violent scenes she had witnessed. What was happening to Veronica now? Dorothy kept hoping for the familiar sound of Veronica’s footsteps in the passage, her hand on the doorknob. She prayed for Veronica to come through the door, wet and disheveled, laughingly recounting what had happened, as if it was simply another one of her escapades.

But she did not come. Dorothy listened to the rain beating against the windowpanes, wet trees rustling and sighing in the wind. Veronica could be anywhere in the vast darkness outside this house. Most likely, she was being held in some dismal police station. What was going on in her head right now? Dorothy hoped she wasn’t cold and frightened; that she had been given something to eat, and was being treated with reasonable kindness. But the scenes she’d just lived through had stripped away her belief in the fundamental goodness of men.

She let the tears come.

*   *   *

DOROTHY MUST HAVE
fallen asleep. Veronica got into bed beside her, fully clothed. The room was dark; the house silent. Veronica’s dress was sodden and she shivered with cold. She touched Dorothy’s damp face with icy fingertips. “Why are you crying?”

“I thought something terrible had happened to you.”

Veronica didn’t reply. Dorothy reached over and lit the gas. A soft exclamation escaped from her lips. “Good God; just look at you! What happened?”

Veronica’s cheek was badly gashed. Her white dress was bedraggled and grimy. One sleeve had been half ripped off; it drooped against her body at a grotesque angle, like a broken limb.

“I was held in a stinking overcrowded cell for hours, then sent before the magistrate.”

“You’re hurt.”

“The march turned into quite a scuffle.”

“Yes, I saw. Let’s get these wet things off you. I’ll see to your cheek.”

Veronica got out of bed and stripped down to her underwear. Dorothy hung the damaged dress over the back of a chair. “What a pity, you looked so splendid in it,” she said sadly. “But I’m sure it can be mended.”

“After today, I hate the very sight of it. I’d like to burn it.”

“You’ve had an awful time.”

“The trial was a complete farce!” Veronica said angrily. “The prosecution put forward the most barefaced lies. I could hardly believe what I was hearing!”

“What did they say?”

“That we set off on our march with loud yells and songs; that we behaved in the most disruptive and violent way. They accused us of knocking off policemen’s helmets and biting and scratching them as we passed, even using our hatpins as weapons!”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Our testimony, and that of the defense witnesses, was ignored completely. When I tried to speak out for myself, I was cut short in the rudest way possible.”

“It’s a disgrace. This is supposed to be a civilized country.

“Justice exists for men in England, not for women.”

Dorothy sighed. “Let me at least clean up your poor cheek. Have you eaten? Shall I get you something?”

“Thank you, but I couldn’t face food.”

As she submitted to Dorothy’s ministrations, Veronica said she had been sentenced to a month’s imprisonment in Holloway, beginning tomorrow. “I’ve been released on bail for the night. The magistrate said I was a little firebrand; he told me prison would cool me down. Ouch, you’re hurting me.” Veronica pulled away.

“Sorry, I’ll try and be gentler. What was the charge?”

“Assaulting the police.” Veronica’s mouth was a grim line. “Nothing could be further from the truth. The police were assaulting me! And the worst of it is that I won’t be imprisoned in the first division.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the section for political prisoners, where you’re treated less harshly and given a few privileges. They’re putting me in the second division with the common criminals, the thieves and drunkards. I’ll be strip searched when I arrive, put in solitary confinement, and forced to submit to all the other lousy rules imposed on female offenders.”

“How can they get away with that?”

“If you have no political status and no civil rights, the law says you don’t qualify as a political prisoner … Dorothy?”

“Yes, what?”

“I’m frightened … don’t go.” Her voice had sunk to a thready whisper. “Stay with me. I really need you tonight.”

“Yes,” Dorothy said. “I’d like that more than anything.”

It was their first night not spent making love. Veronica, shorn of her vivacity and her conviction, seemed much younger; weak and vulnerable. Dorothy ached with a new feeling: a tenderness that was so overwhelming, her whole being reverberated with it. She put her own illness and anxiety on one side, wanting only to comfort Veronica. They hardly spoke, though neither of them slept. Dorothy kept her arms around Veronica the whole night, trying to steady her limbs, which would not stop trembling.

*   *   *

AS DOROTHY APPROACHED
the forbidding central tower of Holloway, dread began to seep through her. The high prison walls, coated with pigeon droppings, cast a deep ominous shadow. The rows and rows of narrow constricted windows seemed designed to let in the minimum of air or light. Veronica had not been allowed visitors for the first fortnight of her sentence, and Dorothy had spent the time in an agony of impatience and uncertainty. She was shown to the visiting room by a cold-eyed young wardress with a neat figure and carefully tended chestnut hair. She wore a dark blue uniform in the style of a hospital nurse, and her posture was very upright; there was something in her manner that reminded Dorothy, incongruously, of a chaperone at a dance.

They walked past a large hall that was surrounded by cells opening onto narrow galleries, fenced in by iron railings. The different floors were connected by a small iron staircase in the center. All the balconies and stairs were draped with wire netting. Dorothy supposed this was to prevent prisoners committing suicide, but it gave the impression they were trapped inside a gigantic and hellish cage.

The wardress began to lead her through a series of passages. Their footsteps resounded dully on the stone floor, which felt chilly and damp beneath Dorothy’s cheap thin-soled shoes. (She needed a new pair, but where would the money come from?) The atmosphere became danker and colder by the minute, and Dorothy was gripped by claustrophobia and horror. From somewhere above came the clanging of metal gates; Dorothy thought she could hear a woman sobbing wildly.

This part of Holloway was like being inside a tomb. And yet it was not the dead who were shut up in here, it was the living. The passages were stuffy and draughty. A thick smell of filth and damp hung in the air, like the stink of drains, rank and rotten. It crept around Dorothy, permeating her clothes. Trying to breathe shallowly, so as to absorb as little as possible of the noxious air, she felt her face grow tense and small feverish spots of exhaustion begin to burn on her cheekbones. She hoped she wouldn’t vomit or pass out.

At last, the wardress ushered Dorothy into a room. “You’re to wait here. The prisoner will be brought to you shortly.” She did not look at Dorothy as she spoke; she seemed to talk past her into the air, in a voice that was completely empty of expression. It sounded odd and unnatural, as though she was speaking from behind a mask, through which no glimmer of personality was allowed to escape. Dorothy stared at her averted face, trying to imagine the indignity and anguish the prisoners must feel being spoken to like this every day. They would be thrown back on themselves, alone and unsupported, continually thwarted in their longing to be recognized as human, too.

When the wardress had gone, Dorothy looked around her. It was an ugly stark room. The walls and ceiling were dirty, and there was one small high window, whose glass panes were so grimy and smeared, the weak daylight could scarcely penetrate. The only furniture was a table, running almost the length of the room, with a hard chair at either end. It would be nearly impossible to talk across it.

Dorothy sat down to wait. After about five minutes, she saw another wardress walking down the corridor, trailed by the slight figure of a woman in a shapeless prison dress made of coarse brown calico. The dress was too short at the sleeves and waist, which made her look like a grotesquely overgrown child. Her hair was hidden under a lumpy white cap and she had a white apron tied around her waist. These garments were none too clean; they had evidently been soiled by many previous wearers. As the pair entered the room, Dorothy realized the prisoner was Veronica.

They stared at one another in dismay. The hideousness of the uniform and the subservient humility it so powerfully suggested had changed Veronica beyond recognition.

In the same expressionless tone as the first wardress, and without looking at either woman, the guard told them to sit at opposite ends of the table, and not to touch one another, nor pass anything between them. The door was left open and she stationed herself outside, to monitor their conversation.