Crooked Pieces (32 page)

I have never seen a woman’s chest except my own, and Ma’s when she was feeding and after she died. Mrs Beckett said they were sinful and we should never ever speak about them. Reverend Beckett said they were God’s gift and should be valued above all else. He licked mine to show how much God loved me. I know now how much God loves me and it is not worth the licking.

Miss Christabel has asked me to be part of the protest. She came to the office one evening when everyone had gone. I was preparing
Votes For Women
for the printers. She asked me whether I should not like to write an article to appear in it. I said I did not think I could.

‘Why not? You are as literate as half the women in the movement now and that without the benefit of proper schooling. It would give great heart to others such as yourself if you could.’

‘Well, I will gladly try if you would like me to.’

‘Ah, but what shall you write about, do you think?’

I supposed I should try to tell about my work.

‘Yes, yes, but office work is office work, although you do it very well. I was thinking of something more…vigorous.’

‘Like my fighting lessons, you mean?’

‘You could mention that, certainly. It would be no bad thing if more of our women learnt the art. But, as you know, Maggie, the vital issue now is our battle against force-feeding. I would like you to give an account of your own experiences.’ I felt cold all over for I have struggled so hard to forget them.

‘What do you think about that?’

I knew there was no choice. ‘I will try, if that is what you wish, Miss Christabel.’

‘Excellent. I am sure you will do it very well, although since it is such a long time since you were last in prison and the methods have been changed, do you not think it would be a good idea if you were to join the others up in Newcastle? That way it will be fresh in your mind.’

My voice went from me. I could not speak. Miss Christabel was smiling, her head tilted in that quizzical way that makes her every request seem reason itself. ‘Of course, Maggie, as you know, there is no compulsion on you to offer yourself for imprisonment. Everyone will understand if you do not feel yourself up to the task, and though it is for working women above all we are fighting, it is a fact that few of them show the strength and dedication needed for such sacrifice.’ At the door she turned. ‘I had always believed you one of those very few.’

I suppose I should be glad. I was stood outside the Palace Theatre in Newcastle waiting for the Lloyd George, four stones in my pocket, each wrapped in a message of defiance. Not five feet from me is Lady Con, Mrs Brailsford, wife of a famous newsman, and next to her Miss Davison, positively hopping with excitement. Suddenly from far away round the
other side we hear a cheer. He has only gone round the back to save himself a meeting with us.

I felt quite sick with relief but, of course, there is no relief in this struggle. Up sweeps another fine black motor. I saw Lady Con step out in front of it, shouting at those inside that they should cease to torture innocent women. Next goes her stone, right past the door and never a scratch.

Miss Davison is struggling to find her pebbles but she is so worked up she drops them all over the pavement and goes scrabbling after them round people’s ankles.

I thought, I could drop mine likewise and no one will know the better, but then I thought, is this what Miss Christabel means when she says the poor have no stomach for a fight? Am I to be her proof?

I took the biggest flint in my pouch and flung it with all my might. Straight into the little grating on the front. There was a terrible scrunching sound and the car stopped dead. Out got a man with a great twizzly moustache, curled enough to feed him down his own nose, I remember thinking. He looked mighty angry. Anyone would think it was him I had struck, and not a silly hunk of metal.

Off to the cells. It was a filthy place, the worst I have seen, and at midnight came all the drunks from the alehouses and piled in next door to us, singing, shouting – fortunately their accents were so strange we could not fathom what they were saying, though I am sure it was not for the ears of Lady Con.

One month in the third division, which for Lady Con and Mrs Brailsford means three days in the second. For the rest of us! I wonder that I thought the last time bad. I knew nothing,
suffered nothing to this torture. And Miss Christabel asks me to write of it.

How? Where are the words?

Handcuffed, my arms behind my back; dragged by my hair along stone passages; flung down steps, knelt on, slapped, head ripped back and clamped between two vicious fists. My mouth torn open with metal pegs, stretched till my lips split like rotten fruit. Wedged apart. And then the tube. A great snaking coil of filthy vomit-stained rubber crawling down my throat, swallowing me up. Fighting for breath, retching, choking. A distant desolate shriek that comes from outside of me but is me, is all that is left of me. The slurp of the curdled slops plopping into the tube. The daggers of light screaming towards me, the iron band tightening round my brain. How do I write about that?

Miss Christabel says never mind. She does not need the article now. Lady Con has written most movingly of her experiences in prison. She will use that instead.

Another
election. The Commons have quarrelled with the Lords over taxes. I suppose we do not pay enough to keep them in their scarlet robes and carriages and castles? I have been sent up to Manchester to help with the campaigning.

Fred came to see me off at the station, but though he squeezed my hand like he would like to take it home with him, he did not kiss me. His eyes were dark and anxious. I waved and waved as the train drew out, but he did not wave back. Just stood and watched till I was out of sight.

I was to go first to the City Hall to hand out pamphlets but news came as I arrived, the speaker was delayed. The
organiser was near frantic. ‘Someone must speak. We have three hundred out there. Promised a London speaker. We cannot fail them at this late stage.’ All eyes turned to me.

‘I cannot do it,’ I stammered, quite stiff with terror. ‘I have never spoke to more than ten, and that very badly. I would not know where to begin.’

‘Why have you come then?’ asked one fierce-looking woman with a twitchy eye.

‘To help. That’s all. To help.’

‘Well then,
help
,’ she roared and the very platform quaked beneath me. I wonder any politician can deny these northern women!

At half past seven the curtains on the stage were drawn back and there below us was a sea of faces – men, women, nobs (not many) – just faces for as far as you could see.

There were four of us at the table, the organiser, her assistant, the fierce woman and me. One by one they spoke. There was much clapping and stamping for the fierce woman who told how she had tipped a pint of beer over the head of a local councillor when he dared to suggest she was not his equal. Indeed she could have led an unarmed army into battle I believe, for none would have dared refuse her. At last she finished and after more cheering, the hall fell quiet. The organiser rose. ‘Tonight we have a speaker all the way from London to bring us news of our esteemed leader, Mrs Pankhurst and her valiant daughters, and to tell us how the campaign is going down there.’ Cheers. ‘I ask you to welcome Miss Maggie Robins.’

Clapping. I climbed to my feet, legs of jelly, hands shaking, no breath inside me, my mind as blank as it had been wiped with Mrs Beckett’s chalk rag.

‘Good evening. I have come up from London today.’ Silence.

A lone man’s voice. ‘Why, chuck?’ Great gales of laughter. When at last it died away, I tried again.

‘I have worked in our office at Lincoln’s Inn for…a long time.’

‘That’s nice.’ Off they go again. The organiser is looking desperate.

‘Get on with it,’ yells another.

The fierce woman is on her feet. ‘It makes you wonder why they send ‘em to us. Done nothing. Knows nothing. Comes here to tell us what’s what.’

Wild cheers and whoops. Slow handclap for me.

I looked out at their grinning faces and back at hers, so sure, so full of scorn.

‘You are right,’ I replied. ‘I know nothing, I have done nothing, because I
am
nothing. I am nothing because whatever I do, whatever I learn, whatever I try to pass on to others, counts as nothing as long as I have no voice, no choice in what I become, in how my life is governed, in how my life is lived. I am nothing. And so are all of you.

‘Do you not see what it is like to be faceless, without a voice, without the right to decide your own destiny? To be nothing – less than animals, yet expected to work, to pay taxes, to drag out your miserable lives in the service of the rich and powerful? What reason have they to change the laws for our sakes? What good will it do a fat man with money in a bank to share it with the starving at his doorstep?’

I heard a faint ‘Hear, hear,’ from near the back.

I went on, ‘This lady is right. I am young, I am ignorant. I
have no right to be here, but I am. All I can offer you is my beliefs. That women are not animals. Should not be treated as such. Should be free as men to choose who governs them and how. You ask, ‘What have I done?’ I have failed. Failed, because men – doctors, they call themselves, who are meant to heal the sick not torture them, have thrust rubber piping down my throat and poured stinking rubbish through it into my belly. And I could not stop them.’

Silence.

‘I have thrown stones at windows and missed, every single time.’

Laughter.

‘I have had Men of God tell me I must burn in hell for wanting justice.’

‘God bless you, girl,’ came a voice.

Everyone cheered.

‘I have lost the person I loved best in all the world to an illness the rich could cure but the poor could not. Because the poor are nothing.’

Fred was waiting for me on the platform. He looked happier than when he had seen me off, but still not the Fred I knew and loved the best. He kissed me on the cheek.

‘Well, now you are famous, Maggie.’

‘How “famous”? What do you mean?’

He pulled a newspaper from inside his coat. I could scarce believe it. There, on the front page was a photograph of
me
, my fist in the air (I cannot remember raising it).
NO LONGER NOTHING
ran the headline and, beneath the picture, an account of my speech. ‘
Grown men weeping
’, it
said. Well, I thought that a bit foolish for those that did had been drunk, but all the same I felt a great warm glow flooding through me.

‘I wonder if Miss Christabel has seen it.’

Fred glanced at me, his eyes weary. ‘I’m sure she has,’ he said.

‘I hope so. I do hope so.’

‘Why? So she can send you on even more dangerous missions? Your imprisonment will be worth much more to her now people know who you are.’

I felt shocked right through. ‘That is a wicked thing to say.’

‘Is it? True, though, I’ll warrant.’

I did not know what to make of his remarks. I said, ‘Are you angry with me for having my picture taken? I did not know they were doing it, I can promise you, or I would have worn my yellow blouse.’ We stood there glaring at each other in the middle of the platform. A porter struggled by with a trunk on his back.

‘’Scuse me, Gov, Miss… Do you think you could kill each other on someone else’s platform? Only I’ve got another four of these to shift and the train leaves in ten minutes.’

Fred is so hopeless. Whenever he is trying to look all cross and serious something always makes him laugh. Once he started I could not hold off long, although I did not like him talking about Miss Christabel like that. It is almost as though he was jealous.

We went to our tearoom. Where we had gone that first Sunday, after the gallery. Fred does not order anything now without asking me. I said I would like a slice of chocolate sponge. He had some too.

‘I have a piece of news for you, Maggie.’ His face told nothing so I knew not, good or bad. ‘I have been offered promotion.’

‘Promotion to what?’

‘Sergeant. I was waiting to hear when you went away.’

‘Is that why you were…?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, that is wonderful.’

‘There is money in it. A hundred a year if I stay in London.’

‘And if you do not?’ I was still hankering for our cottage in Wood Green.

‘Seventy-five. But it is enough, is it not?’

‘Enough for what?’

He smiled at me and I came over mushier than in the Manchester hall. ‘Enough for two to live on?’

I flung my arms round him. ‘It will be near twice that, Fred, for I have fifty now, less what I send my Pa.’

He was quiet for a moment then reached for my hands. ‘Maggie, if I am a sergeant, you cannot go on as you are.’

I stared at him. ‘Why not?’

‘Because while I am a constable I can avoid it. If I am made up, I cannot.’

‘You mean you would take us in charge?’

‘I’d have no choice.’

I love Fred. I love every hair of his head, every breath of his body, but I slapped him. So hard I think he wondered if day was day and night was night.

He rubbed his poor cheek. ‘Not sergeant, then?’ was all he said.

I am on the list of speakers! At our monthly meeting several of the committee remarked upon my visit to Manchester. Miss Sylvia said it was a double triumph, for northern women were famously hard to impress. That much I certainly could vouch for.

Miss Christabel, too, was very generous in her praise, and said she had always known I had what it took. Her saying so meant more to me than a whole book of compliments from anyone else.

This past six weeks I have visited fourteen towns! I have spoken to labourers, countrymen, seamstresses, coal miners and, once, a party of Americans who were on a tour and thought they had tickets for the music hall! Well, we gave them a good show and I think they went home happy. Especially when we all sang ‘Rise up, women, for the fight is hard and long’ to ‘John Brown’s Body’ at the end. They clapped and stamped and put more money in the collecting plates than we had got in the whole of the week before. Miss Davison said it was because they were too dumb to understand our coins, but I think it was because they were good, true people. I heard one say, ‘No American would stand to see his womenfolk so treated.’ For a new sort of people they are a sight more civilised than the British.