Crooked Pieces (28 page)

This is my first real night as an organiser. Yes, I have been trained and put in charge of printing and lists and arranging stalls and even paying some bills, but tonight I have my own team – eight women, two of them nobs, and all instructed to
follow my bidding. I feel sicker than when Fred first came to see me fighting.

We are to break the windows of the Foreign Office and, because it is feared we will meet with rough treatment, we are all parcelled up like china vases. Padded vests and woollens, and inside our skirts in a hidden pocket, a bag of stones. I am twice the size I was this morning. If Fred should see me now I think he would never buy me another piece of chocolate.

He is on duty tonight, I know, and dreading it. I wonder sometimes how he can do his job. He says there are other ways to stop a crime than hurting someone, but it is a message he has yet to sell to his fellows. Not all of them. Many of the bobbies are family men and truly hate to see the women flung about and beaten. The trouble is they are the ones who hang back, while it is the wild young bloods that lay about us with their belts and truncheons.

What can it be in a man that he must loose his anger on the weak? Do they fear us so much? I hope so, for that would help me to bear it.

I am no leader. I am worse than useless. At the very moment when we should hurl our stones I find three of my ladies are shaking like leaves and cannot find their pockets. I say, ‘Sisters,’ (we must always address each other as such, though it is very hard when you know half of them are wearing silk camisoles) ‘make ready.’ Comes this whinnying sound like a half-dead horse, and one of them has a pot of smelling salts up her nose, with the others hanging on her heels to be next.

The Foreign Office, to be sure, is a mighty fine building and
I can understand that it is a shame to ruin its beauty, but it is
only
a building.

I said, ‘What is it you fear? To be arrested or to throw a stone at a window?’

Much shivering.

I thought, well, if they will not do it, then I must, or the whole team will be disgraced. I pulled a stone out and without another word, flung it as hard as I could.

Can you believe that in a building that is more window than wall, I managed to miss? My stone bounced off the bricks and clattered away into the basement. Within nobody stirred. Nobody even turned from their chattering. Nobody noticed.

Suddenly, like a bullet, something flashes by my head and next we know, there is an enormous explosion, or so it sounded, for it was the shattering of a huge, tall window, ceiling to floor. I turned and there, looking as though she had just been crowned queen of the whole world, is my timidest lady, still shivering, but now with excitement and delight.

The others, seeing what smelling salts could bring about, were after her, raining down stones on that building till there was not a pane of glass at ground level.

I grasped another pebble and flung it like I was sending it to the end of the world. We threw and we threw till our arms were fit to fall off and then we were marched away singing to the police station. And all the while the reporters popped their cameras and the crowd cheered and cheered and, I know not why, I thought of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and I wondered if they would still be cheering one week on.

Good old Holloway! I am in the same cell as the first time I was brought here. How strange to think how many have lain on this splintery plank since then or sat on this rickety chair. On the underside is carved
Fight On and God Will Give The Victory
all rough and crooked, and today I was given a spoon with
Christabel Forever
scratched on the handle. I thought perhaps if I got a fresh one I might write
Maggie Forever
but no one would fathom that so I shall put
Sylvia
instead. I bet, if she is brought here, there will be a whole canteen with
Emily Forever
from Miss Davison.

Word has gone out that Miss Dunlop has been released. She refused all food and took only water for four whole days in protest at our treatment. By the end she became so weak and feeble that they would not even care for her in the hospital and sent her home.

In chapel this morning a note dropped on my prayer book.
Hunger strike commences tomorrow morning, 8 o’clock. Pass it on
. So we are all to do it. Oh Lord, give me strength, for all that keeps me going in here is the thought of my next meal.

Today was truly dreadful. Breakfast time passed well enough, for the bread is so foul that it takes little resolve to refuse it, but by dinner I was starving. So much so that when the wardress brought in the soup it smelt as good to me as Cook’s. I drank a lot of water and turned my head to the window so that I need not see it. After an hour she took it away, thank God, for although it was chilled and floating in fat I think I would have had to eat some, had it remained much longer.

Usually I look forward to Exercise but today I felt tired and cold and had to drag my feet round the yard. All of us looked
pinched and weary but when we saw each other we all smiled and raised our hands in salute and after that I felt a good deal stronger. I thought, these are ladies; they have education and money and fine houses. Why should they care about me with my nine stupid psalms and my knitting and cooking? And I knew in another world, the world outside the prison walls, they would not see me, would not know I was born. But here, in this great burial ground of freedom I was what they were – a tiny breath of air. Escaping.

By supper I was past caring, my stomach cramped in knots as though someone had kicked me. I drank more water and finally fell asleep but my dreams were all of pork and chocolate cake and warm sweet milk. I woke a dozen times, aching with hunger, and it seemed to me that in the morning I should have to give in, no matter what.

As it happened I had no choice for I was so stupid with fatigue that I had not finished scrubbing my cell when breakfast came round and so the wardress passed straight by without a word.

I am ashamed to say I cried and cried till the chaplain came by and told me God was punishing me for my wicked ways, which so vexed me that I asked him why God should punish me for following our Lord’s example. He went very purply red and roared, what did I think I was talking of, taking the Lord’s name in vain? I said I was not, only our Lord had gone without His food for forty days and nights in the wilderness, and it was generally agreed to have been a fine thing He had done at the end of it.

The chaplain went stamping off. I think if he could he would have had me whipped, not for taking the Lord’s
name in vain, but for knowing my scriptures better than he did.

The time passes so slowly. I cannot knit, my hands are trembling like an old woman’s and my fingers ache and clack when I try to bend them. My head is thumping. I am so cold. I have nearly finished my water. My belly feels puffed out yet there can be nothing in it. I managed to pull my belt in a whole hole! That cheered me up for, though Fred says I am quite perfect as I am, I would like to trim my waist another inch.

I must have slept. There has been no sign of dinner and yet the guards are calling us down for Exercise. We all look bruised with weariness, great dark circles round our eyes, hair stiff and dirty for we drink our washing water to keep from fainting. A dozen of us, dragging ourselves round the yard. I saw some of the other prisoners staring at us. I had always thought them poor wretched creatures but today they looked a sight better served than we did.

Miss Garnett, who is a good brave soul, winked at me and whispered, ‘Courage. The battle will soon be won.’

I felt like answering, ‘And if it is not?’ but doubt is a worse sin than murder in our movement so I nodded and tried to smile.

Later, when we were back in our cells I heard a tapping on the wall. I tapped back.

‘Can you hear me?’ came a faint voice.

‘Yes.’

‘This evening, when they have taken away the supper we are to break our windows. Miss Christabel has organised photographers. When the clock strikes eight. That is the signal.’

‘How?’ was all I could think of.

‘With your shoe. With anything. Can you do it?’

‘I do not know. I am very tired. My arms hurt so much.’

There was a silence. ‘Well, it is up to you. I was told you were one of our leaders.’

I waited until the brute had closed the door. They have given us fish for supper, hoping, I suppose, that the smell would make it harder to resist, but tonight I scarce noticed it. I took my knife (bent piece of tin, more like) and hacked and sawed at my wobbly chair till I could turn one leg in my hand. I wriggled it and wrenched it and finally it broke away clean with a snapping sound that could be heard in the Governor’s office, I would not wonder. I held my breath, fearful that the brute would come barging back in, but it is a long floor and she was away down the other end.

I tucked the leg back in place but it looked so crooked I felt sure it would be seen, so when the wardress came for my tray I sat full square on the middle of it with my legs spread out like a fishwife. She glared at me and I was terrified she would make me stand up as we are supposed to when they enter, but I think she was near as tired as I was for she said nothing but just slammed out of the cell, rattling her keys.

I waited a few minutes and when it seemed that all was quiet for the night I got off the chair and pulled the leg off again. It made a sturdy weapon.

There was another tapping on my wall. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘Five minutes.’

How she knew, I cannot tell but I thought I should get myself in position for it would be a sorry thing after all my pains if I should miss the signal.

It was then I understood why I will never be a leader. The window is high up in the wall. To break it I would have to be on a level and the only way I could achieve such a thing would be – to stand on my chair.

I could have wept. Indeed, I was closer than I care to say, but then my neighbour tapped again.

‘Two minutes. Stand by.’

I thought, she thinks I am a leader. How can I fail her, and all the women who put their trust in us?

I pulled down my bed, set the chair on top of it, slanting it against the wall like a ladder, and clambered up till my nose was rubbing against the bars, clasping my chair leg like a truncheon. My head was spinning and little black dots came darting at me like angry flies. I could feel the strength soaking out of me. It was then I heard the prison clock. A great clanging chime, iron cold. One, two, three… At the last beat there was a pause like the world holding its breath then, from far away I heard a voice. Thin, tinny, a Punch and Judy puppet. ‘Votes for women’, and all through the block came this wailing, wandering cry, ‘Votes for women’. But there was nothing weak about the sound that followed. Glass, glass, glass, shattering, crashing into the hard stone yard below. I hoisted my chair leg and struck as hard as I could. The panes held firm and I feared I was too weak to break them. The chair swayed beneath me. I grasped the bars and clung with all my might to keep my balance, then raised the wooden leg and smashed it down on to the
window. Smashed it and smashed it, again and again.

I broke seven panes. That is the most of anyone. I am to be taken before a magistrate in the Governor’s office.

What a horrible watery man was the magistrate. Eyes paler than his pus-coloured skin. ‘Close confinement. Seven days.’

This is a terrible place. No light, only a murky glow from the passage. Double iron doors – as if I had the strength to break out of a paper bag, let alone a prison cell! God help me, how can I live in this dungeon for seven days? And if I die who will ever know it or mourn for me?

Now I am drenched with crying. Fred, I love you so much. I am sorry I am grown so ugly and dirty and cannot keep even my own spittle down. I am disgusting. My skin is like wafers and my bones are poking through my clothes. My hair is falling out in handfuls. My beautiful brown hair that you loved so much is lying on my pillow and my shiny white teeth are yellow with slime. I hope I do die. I would rather be dead than Fred see me like this. Or Ma.

Today the doctor came. He said I must stop my fast and take some nourishment or he would not answer for my fate. I could not speak for dryness but made a sign that I would like some water. He raised his hand and one of the brutes came over to him. He whispered something to her. She nodded and went away, then came back with a covered cup with a spout like Nan used to have. She hauled me up and put it to my lips.

I have been moved to the hospital. I have broken my fast. There was milk in the cup.

Mrs Pethick Lawrence had organised a great reception for us on our release, with a band and reporters and masses of people cheering. Out we all came and they clapped and sang and waved their banners, though I think they were a little shocked by how we all looked.

Miss Sylvia tore right up to me. ‘Maggie, we are so proud of you. It has been all over the papers how you chopped up your chair and smashed your windows. Fred has been round at the office every day to hear how you are.’

I positively shook. ‘He is not here?’

She took my hand. ‘I thought you would like to rest a little first?’

Miss Christabel had also come to meet us for it seems we ‘Hunger Strikers’ are quite famous. She looked so beautiful in her lilac gown with the purple feathers round her snow-white straw. I thought perhaps she would like to ask me how it had been in ‘close confinement’, for she must surely stand in danger of it herself, and I was right for she made her way towards me after a while.

‘Maggie, how are you? A bad time, as I understand?’

‘Not the best, Miss Christabel, for sure.’

She smiled. It was like a beam of the purest sunshine. ‘And I hear you broke seven panes? That is truly impressive.’

I felt a great warm glow flushing through me.

‘But you broke your strike? Why was that?’

‘I was… I did not know… I thought it was water.’

‘Of course. That is what I had supposed. You must be more wary in the future. The authorities will always seek out the weakest link in a chain. Well done.’ And she was gone.