Crooked Pieces (31 page)

A doctor, yes, for they are vile creatures, but a woman? Are these who we are fighting for? Tonight I have no more faith, no beliefs, no hopes. Tomorrow I shall be seventeen. Well, let that be all, I have had enough.

This morning I was taken to the Governor’s office. I feared it was to begin again and I knew I could not stand it. Could not. I stood before him.

‘Margaret Robins, you are to be released this afternoon. Return to your cell.’

At a quarter before two I was taken to the prison gates and turned out into the street. In Birmingham. I had no money, no ticket for the train, only my foul filthy clothes that I had splashed with cold water to try and rub the sick away and failed, as I have failed at everything else. No one to meet me. No grand procession with horses and bands and women waving banners. Nothing. I sat down on the curb. A policeman came up to me and asked me my name.

‘Maggie Robins.’

‘Then I must ask you to come along with me.’

I tried to get up but there was no strength left in me and I sank back. He raised his arm and I knew he was preparing to strike me. I just sat there, too weak to move, too smashed about to care.

Footsteps running. ‘Maggie? Oh God, Maggie. What have they done to you?’ Fred, crouching beside me. ‘Maggie? Do you hear me?’ Like he was speaking to a child. ‘Maggie, give me your hand. That’s right. I’ve come to take you home.’

I looked at him but he was ten years older than two weeks ago so I knew I must have died. He glanced up at the other man. ‘My thanks.’

The bobby was staring at me, frowning. ‘It cannot be right,’ he said, then shook his head and turned and walked away.

Fred carried me to a waiting cab. Outside the railway
station he bought me a strawberry ice. I threw it in the gutter.

It was dark when the train arrived in London. I know now why I have been freed. It is to say goodbye to Ma.

I sat by her bed. Her neck was swollen and disgusting, like a great onion was bursting through her skin. She could hardly speak. Lucy attended to the young ones and, though she did not say a word to me, I saw that she was trying. My darling Evelyn came running to me as we opened the back door. ‘Ma’s got a bad neck.’

‘I know, sweet.’

‘Have you come to make her better?’

Fred swept her up into his arms and set her on his shoulders. She squealed with happiness. ‘Let me down, let me down.’

‘Only if you count to twenty.’

Off they went into the cold evening air. Inside all was stuffy, rancid, rotting. Pa was clamped in the corner like he had been nailed there.

I climbed the stairs.

Her eyes flickered as I came in. I saw that she did not like my looks. I sat down by the bed. Saw her waxy skin,
sweat-drenched
hair, eyes dull with pain. I remembered Miss Sylvia’s words: ‘Why couldn’t it have been me?’ But I didn’t want it to be me. I didn’t want it to be anyone. I wanted to save her. Make her well again. I wanted to tell her all the things I never had. How much I loved her. That I was proud to be her daughter. That I never meant to…but the words would not come. They stayed locked inside my head.

‘Ma, I am so sorry I have not been home.’

She stirred.

I took a breath. ‘Ma, I am giving it up. The Cause. There is no point. I will come home and nurse you back to health, I promise you.’

She turned her face away.

I tried to straighten the sheet. She flinched as it brushed against her skin. ‘Ma, Fred has asked me to give it up. I love him. He is a good man. The best that ever lived.’

Still she faced the wall.

I knelt down beside the bed. ‘Ma, tell me what you want. I know I have not been a good daughter to you. I have been selfish and vain and just because I brought money home, I thought I was better than you – all of you. But I knew nothing. Tell me what to do, and whatever you say, I will do it.’

Then she did look back, and through her croaky blistered throat she whispered, ‘Fight for us, Maggie’.

Mrs Grant helped me lay her out. I wanted to do it alone, but since I had never done it, it made sense to let her show me. She did not interfere, just gave advice.

I washed Ma’s body gently with soft soap. She was swollen all over with great bulging lumps. Her breasts were shrivelled like an eagle’s claw had raked them. Her skin was greasy yellow.

I thought, how can a person live, even for an hour, with a body that turns against them? Is this how I shall end? And I thought, if she had been rich she could have been cured. The rich do not die covered in bruises and swellings, between
rough sheets in dark, stinking rooms with no one by to wipe their sweat away or cool their fever. They do not leave a family without a mother.

All night long I have lain awake. I am needed here. I cannot desert the little ones. Pa will ignore them and Lucy… Who knows? Ma cannot have wanted me to forsake them, even for the Cause. I must stay. I know I must. Yet now, lying here on this flea-bitten mattress with Lucy’s feet in my face I cannot help thinking of my beautiful room in Argyle Place. Of all my learning and typewriting and adding up accounts. Is it all to go to waste?

Oh, Ma, forgive me. Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to cry for I have forgotten.

The parlour was dark, save for a streak of moonlight on the coffin. Such a cold light. The very wood looked lifeless, dry as bone – none of the rich warm swirls of Argyle Place. Only rough raw planks, splintered at the seams, and a coarse linen cloth to shield her from their scraping.

Clouds crept across the moon and blacked her out. Took her away.

I found some matches and a stub of candle. I sat by her till dawn. Waiting for her to answer.

We buried Ma this afternoon. She is near Mrs Grant’s daughter on a little hill behind the church. In the morning I took Evelyn and Will to the river-bank and we picked some flowers for them to lay on the grave. They had mostly withered by the time Reverend Beckett had done preachifying, but it was no matter for Fred had bought a whole bunch of
white lilies that near covered the coffin, and there was another great pile from Miss Sylvia and Miss Annie. I saw Mrs Beckett eyeing them most greedily so I shall go by the church tomorrow morning and see if she has nabbed them for the altar.

Afterwards we went home and Mrs Grant and I served tea and cold meat with pickles to everyone. Will liked it so much he asked if we could bury someone else tomorrow. I slapped him, so for once in his life he had something real to cry about. Lucy spent the whole afternoon making cow’s eyes at Fred, for all the good it did her. Alfie’s girl, Edith, is a sweet-natured creature. She had brought a cake from the bakery that she had paid for herself and when the others had gone she stayed and helped me clear up, poor Mrs Grant having fallen to weeping. I gave the poor soul the baby to hold.

I walked with Fred to the bus stop. I know he would have stayed, slept on the floor, if I had asked him. I did not. I watched him mount the stairs. He always likes the open deck. Says you can see forever. He turned to wave to me. My hand waved back. Is this what it is like, being dead? I have remarked every single thing today, and felt nothing.

Pa had been at the ale when I got back. He was slumped by the hearth holding Ma’s shawl that I had given her and snivelling. I thought, if he wipes his nose on that I shall spit.

Mrs Grant was somewhat recovered. ‘Maggie, your Pa and I have been talking…’

‘Oh?’

‘It is arranged. I will help with the baby and little Will and Evelyn. Lucy can continue her job and Edith says she will call every evening and put them to bed if I cannot do it.’

I stared at her. ‘What are you saying?’

I must have looked mighty wild for she became nervous. ‘So that you need not worry. You have enough to deal with…’

I shook my head. ‘I must come home. I cannot continue. That is all finished. Over. This is where I belong now.’

Mrs Grant looked agitated. She glanced at Pa.

I have never thought much of my father. I knew he would not care who did what, so long as his food was waiting for him and his shoes cleaned, but he pulled himself out of his chair and came to me. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘No, Maggie. It shall be as Mrs Grant says. It is what your ma wanted.’

I looked at him and it was as if a great iron cage had disappeared from round my heart and I could feel again. I burnt with anger, enough to set his skin on fire with just one breath.

‘How do you know what Ma wanted, Pa? When did you ever bother to ask?’

He took a step back. ‘Maggie…’

‘No don’t bother to answer, because I know the answer.
Never
. You… You let her die. She could have got well. She could have got better.’

‘Maggie, no…’ He fended my words away as though they were blows. ‘Tell her, Agnes.’

Mrs Grant put her hand on my arm. ‘No one could cure her, Maggie. It wasn’t something that could be stopped.’

‘I could have stopped it. I could have found someone. Been here… She was young, she didn’t have to die. Why did you not send for me? Fetch me home? I could have…’

What could I have?

Pa turned his head to the window, staring out, great shoulders hunched. ‘It’s as I’ve said. You’re to go back to your work. It’s what your ma wanted. This is not your home any more.’

Everyone was very kind in the office. Miss Sylvia said I should take time off if I needed to, but I did not. I wanted to be working. Miss Christabel said that was sensible of me and kept me harder at it than ever. Night and day, fighting, writing, agitating, up and down the country, always on the move. Not thinking.

I sent money now. Did not visit. I wrote to Mrs Grant, always with a little note for Evelyn and she would send me back a picture or a verse she had learnt and ask when I was coming home. At first I dreaded getting them but after a while I got used to it and what had been a cut became a graze.

And we were so busy.

Mr Hardie speaks every day in the House of the torture, asking how in a civilised country such savagery can be allowed. It seems now they are using tubes which they force down the prisoner’s nostrils and pump food into her that way. I have met women who have suffered this. Though they smile and try to make light of it, I can see how dreadful is their suffering. Their noses are swollen and so inflamed they can hardly breathe but rather snuffle, and their eyes are shot with blood from retching. They cannot swallow and their hands shake continually. Their voices are tired and crackling. And yet they go on and on.

Mrs Pankhurst looks quite ashen. I think she fears we are
going to lose the battle after all, for how can we fight barbarians? And it is barbarians that rule this country. Always she has told us that human life is sacred. All human life. So, though we are beaten and abused, we may not strike back. ‘Our weapons are not those of the gun, the whip, the truncheon. Our only armour is the truth, our shield, the justice of our cause.’

I asked Miss Christabel if we might not even defend ourselves, for I am a fine fighter now and can kick a pillow half across a room. She said, no, for then we should lose the support of the public. I thought, well, much good this support has done us so far. We are no more than a circus show to them. They may shake their heads and cry ‘Shame’ but which one of them sleeps less sound for knowing a woman is being slammed to the stone floor of a cell and pumped full of slush?

Every day I send out posters showing the awful deed. The papers, too, are full of it. Pictures, plays, protests. And through all this Mr Gladstone stands up and jokes. He says there is no serious harm can come from force-feeding, and besides, the remedy is in our own hands. He cannot understand what all the fuss is about.

I have walked four hours round Lambeth to collect signatures from doctors to say it must be stopped. That it is dangerous to the health, inhuman, cruel. All were from home when I called. It is the same wherever you go. No one will speak the truth – that women are being tortured in the name of the law. I think they are waiting for one of us to die. Well, if it is me, what good will that do, for I am no one? And it will not be me, for I dare not go through it again. I do anything, everything, to keep myself safe from arrest. I will stay at my desk till
midnight and be back again by seven. Miss Sylvia says I must not work such hours, but Miss Christabel applauds it.

Last night Fred came round to take me to the playhouse. He had saved up specially for the tickets, as it was a piece by Mr George Bernard Shaw, and he knows how much I admire him. I wore my beautiful blue shawl, but for all its finery I looked like a bag of bones. I fell asleep after ten minutes. Fred took me home at the interval. He said it was no matter, but I could see how much I had pained him. I hate myself for being so useless. I cannot look pretty in my best clothes. I cannot stay awake in a comedy. What is the point of me at all?

Mrs Garrud says I am burning the candle at both ends. Fred says I am wearing myself into the ground, and he is right. They do not know the reason. That I cannot face the agony again. I will do anything to avoid it.

Miss Christabel has called for volunteers to go to Newcastle. The Lloyd George man is to address a Liberal meeting. Needless to say, first off the starter’s post was Miss Davison who is turning quite purple with frustration at not being arrested. She told me she practises force-feeding herself every evening before she goes to bed. I suppose this means pushing a strawberry down her throat without biting, for her skin is as clear as ever and her voice as loud.

Lady Con has again offered herself. Truly she is a brave creature for I believe her fear is as terrible as ever, yet she refuses to yield to it. Surely that is greater courage than to rush blindly into battle, caring only for glory and your picture in the paper? Indeed, I think her photograph on the front page would be a worse punishment far than the two or three days
she spends in Holloway each time she comes before the court.

Nobs are not like other people. Once when she was in the cells, the matron came and said it was time to get ready for court, but the bobbies would not depart. Miss Sylvia told me Lady Con stripped right down to her waist and washed in front of them. I would rather die. She also told me Lady Con has carved a ‘V’ on her chest for ‘Votes’ or maybe ‘Victory’. Surely that must have hurt most terribly?