Octavia (8 page)

But although the great popular movement passed yet
another resolution at the conclusion of its mass meeting, petitioning Parliament, yet again, to bring in legislation for an official women’s suffrage bill, it was completely ignored. And at the end of the month, two suffragettes walked into Downing Street and made their own personal protest by smashing the windows. Militancy had begun.

The case for militant action was debated furiously at suffragette meetings and in committee rooms up and down the country. Octavia argued her own case passionately.

‘I don’t think breaking windows will do us any good at all,’ she said. ‘It will only irritate people and lose us support. And anyway, they’ll send for the glaziers and have them repaired in no time and it’ll all be forgotten. We should be looking for something to show we’re against bad laws but don’t wish to harm anybody by opposing them. We need something symbolic. Something that will break a small, unimportant law and catch attention without hurting anyone.’ But for the moment she couldn’t suggest anything suitable. And in any case she couldn’t really think straight with Em’s baby due at any moment.

He was born on June 30
^th
and was called Edward, and was a lot smaller than his sister had been. Octavia thought he looked rather frail, but she didn’t say so, naturally. She stood by the bedside with the child in her arms and told her cousin he was a little dear.

‘You’ve got a pigeon pair,’ Amy said, enjoying the sight of her daughter with a baby in her arms. ‘You clever girl.’

‘She looked jolly tired,’ Octavia said as she and her mother were walking home across the heath.

‘Giving birth is a tiring business,’ Amy told her. ‘But he’s here now and she’ll soon pick up again. Your Aunt Maud will
make sure she has plenty of nourishing food. And she’s got the rest of the summer to be out and about. That will make her stronger too. I wonder whether Ernest will employ another nursemaid.’

The summer was given over to Emmeline and her two babies. Octavia spent nearly every afternoon walking on the heath arm in arm with her cousin while the nursemaids pushed the prams and Eddie slept and Dora sat up and babbled at the view.

The debate in the suffrage movement went on and various suggested tactics were attempted and failed. A group of women tried to rush the Houses of Parliament and were all arrested, another tried to smuggle their way in inside a furniture van, but were discovered and arrested too. Finally, at the end of October, a new and novel idea was mooted and Octavia knew at once that this was the demonstration she’d been waiting for, the one she had to join. She knew she would be arrested and would suffer for it, but it was the right thing to do and she would do it.

‘We are going to Parliament Square,’ she told her parents, ‘and we’re going to chain ourselves to the railings. It will be perfectly peaceable, Mama. We’re not going to break anything or shout or try to rush the building or anything like that. We’re just going to march up to the railings and padlock ourselves in. We shall be arrested and I expect we shall be sent to prison but nobody’s going to get hurt and with a bit of luck it will get into the newspapers and make people think.’ Her mother was upset and tried to persuade her against it.

‘You are very young, my darling,’ she said. ‘I know you say it’s going to be peaceable but you can’t be sure of it, can you?
These things get out of hand and I wouldn’t want you to get hurt. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you’ve graduated and then do things?’

Octavia put her arms round her mother’s poor tense neck and gave her a kiss. ‘I’m nineteen,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t stayed on at school and gone to college I could have been out at work for five years. Think of that.’

‘But what if you get hurt?’ her mother worried.

‘I shan’t,’ Octavia said, with more assurance than she actually felt. ‘I promise you.’

‘J-J,’ Amy appealed. ‘You speak to her.’

But he gave her a wry smile and said he was sure Octavia knew what she was doing. ‘Just so long as you write and tell us what happens,’ he said. ‘Or telephone us, perhaps?’

‘Oh dear,’ Amy sighed. ‘It’s such a worry. Well then, go if you must but don’t wear your spectacles. If they throw you about and the glass gets broken it could blind you.’

So Octavia joined her first militant demonstration with her heart in her throat and her sight in her handbag.

It was an afternoon of penetrating dampness and Parliament Square was uniformly grey, the air smoke-shrouded and smelling of sulphur, the sky leeched of all colour and coldly empty. The trunks of the nearly denuded trees were dark as coal, the grass in the central garden no longer green but a dull sludge grey that reminded Octavia of dirty linen, and the Houses of Parliament looked smudged and brooding, as though the great building was weeping sooty tears for all the iniquities of its long history.

The pavements were crowded with waiting women, dark in their winter coats and hats, parading slowly, two by two, or
loitering as if they’d stopped to gossip, and there were one or two watchful policemen too, standing guard outside the Houses of Parliament, dour in their black uniforms. The banners were still folded up and hidden away in bags and holdalls, ready to be unfurled at the signal, but for now everything was quiet and grey and watchful.

Octavia’s heart was beating so powerfully it was making her throat pulse. She was glad she’d had the sense to wear a scarf and that the telltale signs were hidden. It wouldn’t have done to let the others know what sort of state she was in, especially as she wasn’t entirely sure what sort of state it was herself. Fear? she thought. No, don’t let it be fear. That would be shameful. Excitement then? But it was too raw for excitement. Too raw and too immediate. It was very nearly time. There was no going back.

A whistle shrilled so suddenly it made her heart leap. She was propelled into action. Run! Now! No time to think. She rushed to the railings blindly, pulling out her chain and padlock as she ran. The grey scene broke into a jostling kaleidoscope, a gloved hand waved, a skirt swished, black boots skimmed the pavement, a hat fell from a tangle of hair, she had a glimpse of railings sharp as spears. Then the banners were out, unfurling in splashes of purple, green and white, bold as flowers in the darkness of the square. People were shouting, ‘Votes for women! Votes for women!’ She arrived at the railings, and clung to them, panting. Now! she urged herself. Quickly. Before they can stop you. The padlock engaged with a crunch. The gesture was made. It was done.

After the rush, there were minutes of extraordinary stillness as the demonstration swirled around her and more and more women attached themselves to the railings beside her. Her
heart steadied. Then she heard someone running, big boots heavy on the pavement, and a policeman’s face loomed in upon her, round and hot and cross under his black helmet.

‘Nah then,’ he said, ‘just undo that there padlock,
if
you please, miss. Let’s not be havin’ any trouble. You won’t gain nothing with this sort a’ carry-on.’

‘It can’t be done,’ she told him, pleased by how calm she was. ‘I’ve left the key at home.’

He breathed deeply, glaring at her. ‘You’re refusing my order,’ he said. ‘Is that what it is?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I’m refusing. Like the government. This is a protest against the refusal of the government to grant the vote to women. They refuse. I refuse.’

‘Then I shall have to arrest you.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is understood.’

He left her attached to the railings and clomped off to speak to his sergeant, who was standing in the road, chewing the end of his waxed moustache. Another constable joined them and there were several minutes of earnest conversation. Then the sergeant walked away.

There was another woman in chains a few feet further along the road. ‘Name of Polly,’ she said, introducing herself. ‘We’ve set them a problem.’

But not for long. They were soon back with another constable, who was carrying a hacksaw. He moved along the line, cutting through the chains and grumbling. ‘You’d better keep still if you don’t want to get hurt,’ he warned Octavia. ‘I got no time fer silly women.’

A small crowd had gathered and there was a photographer on the other side of the street setting up his camera. Octavia watched him, hoping he worked for one of the newspapers.
But then the Black Maria arrived and they were rounded up and led towards it, shouting, ‘Votes for women!’ all the way.

I’m a criminal now, Octavia thought, as she was pushed into one of the L-shaped cells inside the van. It was airless and dark in there, for there was only one small, blacked-out window, and unpleasantly claustrophobic, being designed to force a prisoner to sit bolt upright with his legs in the space under the unseen seat in front of him. Octavia’s face was just a few inches from the wall in front of her, her back was jammed against the wall behind her and her legs were so tightly wedged under the seat that she couldn’t turn her feet to left or right. She could hear other prisoners being pushed in behind her and recognised Polly’s voice still shouting, ‘Votes for women!’ and that encouraged her. We shall be sent to prison now, she thought, and even though she felt proud of what she was doing, she shuddered despite herself.

It was late the following evening before she got a chance to write the promised letter to her father and she was too weary to say much but she wrote what she could.

‘
Holloway Gaol
,’ she said.

‘
Dear Pa
,

‘I have been sentenced to six weeks and I am here in Holloway Gaol. It is not a pleasant place, I must confess to you, but then I did not imagine it would be. Prisons are designed to be unpleasant. However, I think that being here will prove to be an educational experience, if nothing else. I am a category A prisoner, which means I shall be allowed books and writing paper, and I intend to keep a diary so I shall do what I can to make the six weeks pass quickly
.

‘We were booked in by a very unpleasant woman. She gave us our prison uniforms, which are rough and ugly, and took 
away our own clothes and all our personal belongings with the exception of my spectacles, which she allowed me to keep, and said, “Don’t go giving yourself airs. You’re here to be punished and punished you will be.” Strange to think that when we win the vote we shall be winning it for her too.

‘Tell Mama that I am looking after myself. I may be a convicted criminal but I am still your most loving daughter Tavy.’

Her father wrote back by return of post to applaud her courage and ask if there was anything she needed that he could supply.
‘I hope you will tell me everything you can about life “inside”,’
he said.
‘Your mother and I need to feel we are still close to you and letters must stand in lieu of conversation now.’

‘I will do my best,’
Octavia replied,
‘although I fear that much of what I write will be censored, for opinion here is not free. Everything about this place is a punishment, from the air we breathe, which smells of stale cabbage, dirty clothes, unwashed bodies, sweat and used chamber pots – if you can imagine such a thing – to the discomfort of the cell. When I was first left alone here I felt like a caged animal and had to pace about. I simply couldn’t sit down or keep still. However, I am accustomed to it now. It is a matter of adjusting the way in which you think. There are still times when the walls seem to be looming in on me but I tell myself that this is because the cell is so small and the brickwork has been painted such a claustrophobic green; the barred window is so high I can’t see out of it but I tell myself that at least it lets in light; the plank bed is hard and uncomfortable but no worse than a lot of women endure every night of their lives; the uniform is a shapeless dress made of rough cotton with large black arrows 
stamped all over it, a rough holland apron and a mop cap like the ones skivvies wear. I think it is to show us how low we have sunk, but we wear it like a badge of pride. However, there are some things that cannot be improved by thinking. The food is badly cooked and often inedible, cockroaches scuttle about the cell all night, and the warders still enjoy their power and bully whenever they can.’

The conversation continued. She wrote about the other prisoners she met in the yard: the petty thieves,
‘who have no other way of earning a living’,
and were rough and tough and swore like troopers; the pickpockets,
‘who take what they can, where they can’;
the prostitutes,
‘who are weary and slipshod and old before their time’,
and one in particular who had become a friend.
‘She is an intelligent girl, sharp-witted and funny and quick to understand what is said to her. She has had very little education for there were six younger brothers and sisters for her to look after and schooling was a luxury. Her father has been in and out of prison all his life, so she says, and I can well believe her, and her mother has been so worn down by children and poverty that Lizzie has had to do most of the work for her. Now it is her earnings that keep the family going. It is little short of a scandal and a dreadful waste of her undoubted talent.’

The long weeks passed slowly. But eventually she was serving her last few days and the punishment was nearly over.

‘I believe in the rightness of our cause,’
she wrote in her bold, firm hand,
‘more passionately now than I did on the day I was arrested, and nothing that is done or said to me in this place will change my mind in the slightest degree. Enduring things makes me aware that I am living to some purpose and that is a splendid thing because it is what I have always 
wanted to do. The more of us who are sent to prison the stronger we shall be. Now it is truly a fight and a fight for what is just and right. Eventually, no matter what is happening to us now, the government will have to give in and accede to our demands, just as earlier governments gave in to the Chartists. The longer I sit here on my own and think about it, the more obvious it seems to me. I wonder they can’t see it too. Their opposition to us is cruel but it is also foolish. They are a House full of King Canutes trying to bully the incoming tide
.