Women of Courage (33 page)

Ruth hated it. It made her unhappy in a job she was proud of. She hated it even more when George seemed to sympathise with them. He told her how sensible, even grateful, the suffragettes often were when arrested. He thought they had spirit and accepted that they would win the vote in the end. He had carried a little grandmother of about seventy all the way across Parliament Square in a suffragette demonstration one day. She had slapped his face to ensure she was arrested for assault and breach of the peace — and then complimented him for giving her the best piggy-back ride since her father took her to the wedding of Queen Victoria!

So why can’t they behave decently in prison? Ruth thought. She scowled as she climbed the dark stone stairs inside the prison. Today she would have to deal with that woman Becket again. And Sarah Becket was the worst of all, because Ruth had begun to believe her . . .

Ruth was not sorry for the woman. The fact that Sarah Becket was rich and well-connected did not matter to her at all. Indeed, she rather enjoyed the fact that such women had to be washed and shampooed for nits like the others, carry their own slop buckets to the sluice, even be forcibly fed if necessary. That was common justice — proof that no one was above the law, wherever they were born.

But . . . Dr Armstrong said that Sarah Becket was insane. And while Ruth Harkness was not medically qualified, she did not believe that. She had met several madwomen in prison. One had claimed to be Mary, Mother of God; another had persisted in lifting her skirt and showing her drawers to anyone who opened the door of her cell; a third had screamed all night because she could see her dead child floating in the air in front of her; a fourth had sat, totally silent, with her face to the wall for three days.

Sarah Becket had done nothing like this. She had simply stated, in a clear, forceful, upper-class accent, that Dr Armstrong was a pimp.

Put baldly like that, Ruth admitted to herself, it did sound mad. Dr Armstrong was a respectable, prosperous doctor, a figure of authority in the prison; Sarah Becket was a convicted criminal, so unbalanced that she thought she could influence Parliament by slashing a famous picture with a meat knife. That was why Ruth had not yet voiced her suspicions to George. But . . .

Ruth had
been
there. She had seen the conviction with which Becket spoke, the shock, almost guilt, on the face of Dr Armstrong. And then, she had worked beside Dr Armstrong for some months . . .

It was irrational to feel revolted by a man who was always perfectly polite and professional, but . . . Ruth always kept as far away from him in a cell as she could. As though those great, stubby fingers of his might suddenly grab
her
instead of palpating the chest of a patient; as though the thick black hairs on the backs of his wrists could come alive like spiders, and crawl out of his sleeves in dozens.

She shuddered, as she hung up her coat and hat in the locker-room and put on her regulation apron. Of course such thoughts were nonsense, but — what if the story Becket told her was true? If this doctor, those
hands,
were really leading little girls out of the safety of a charitable institution into a life of prostitution, where men would pay to paw them before they were even old enough to . . . It did not bear thinking about! Ruth Harkness buckled a bunch of keys on to her belt and set off down the long grey corridor to her first duties of the day.

But it
had
to be thought about.

If what Becket said was true, then Dr Armstrong was not just a criminal but a serious, monstrous one. A bluebeard of a man who should be locked away for far longer than most women here. One of the fundamental beliefs that Ruth shared with her fiancé George was that the police and prison service were the soldiers of right in a war against wrong. They prayed, every night, that God would guide their hands in the cleansing of society, the crusade against evil. If she, Ruth, suspected Dr Armstrong of such a crime and did nothing about it she would be a traitor to God.

But if she did something about it and it proved to be untrue, she would almost certainly lose her job.

All morning Ruth Harkness went about her duties in a foul mood. She cursed Sarah Becket for ever coming to Holloway at all, and she cursed herself for listening to the woman and getting drawn into a discussion with her. She was still angry when, at two o’clock, she received a summons to go to Dr Armstrong’s consulting room.

Surprised, she left the main cell block, climbed two flights of stairs, and knocked on his door.

‘Come!’

She entered, and strode quietly into the centre of the room. It was peaceful here, civilised in comparison to the rest of the prison. A carpet on the floor, a fire in the grate, no bars in the windows. Dr Armstrong sat with his back to the window, writing at a large wooden desk. He had a pipe in his mouth and, as he wrote, he puffed and grunted to himself. After a moment he blotted the paper, sat back in his chair, and smiled.

‘Ah. Miss — er — Harkness, is it not?’

‘Yes, Doctor. You sent for me.’

‘I did indeed. It was good of you to come.’ He hesitated, and the ingratiating smile faded, to be replaced by a frown of portentous solemnity. ‘It was, er, about an unfortunate scene that you were forced to witness the other day. I realise that you must witness very many unpleasant things in the course of your job, but I thought perhaps that this event was peculiarly distressing.’

‘What scene was that then, Doctor?’ Ruth kept her face wooden, to force him to say it. Already she felt anxious, thinking how easy it would be to lose her job, how important it was to her. And there was something else, less tangible, to do with the man himself. He folded his fleshy fingers under his chin.

‘Surely you remember, Miss Harkness? The outburst of the prisoner Becket, when only you and I were in her cell. She made some most distressing and slanderous allegations. You remember that?’

‘Yeah.’ He glanced at her sharply, as though suspecting insolence in the flat monosyllabic answer.

‘Well, Mrs Becket is a distinguished lady of a certain social class that we would not normally expect to find in Holloway, and I appreciate how hard it must be for yourself and your colleagues to control such women. Particularly when they make appalling allegations that you might be tempted to believe. So …’

He hesitated, cold grey eyes watching her carefully from under thick bushy eyebrows. The fingers writhed thoughtfully under the chin.

‘. . . so I have decided to take the unusual step of reassuring you about the nature of her illness. Mrs Becket is, I regret to say, suffering from a depressive illness which can lead to paranoid delusions about those who care for her. I am acquainted with her family doctor and am told that she has suffered from this for some time. It leads to precisely the sort of fantastic outburst we heard yesterday, which can be most upsetting for all who have to deal with her. Including her husband, poor man, from what I hear.’

‘You mean she’s mad?’

‘If you wish to put it that baldly, yes. But it is a form of madness in which the patient can appear perfectly normal for most of the time. She may appear so to you, I don’t know?’

Again the smile, ingratiating, pleasant, the fat lips in the heavy, solid face. Like a concerned family doctor inquiring about how you felt.

‘Yes, she does.’ Ruth answered bluntly, without thinking. She regretted it almost immediately. Yet it was the truth, and if she challenged him with that, perhaps she would see what he really meant. After all, if he
was
lying . . .

The smile faded. The thick fingers picked up the pipe, enveloped it, struck a match. ‘Well, that’s natural enough. Have you seen many madwomen, Miss Harkness?’

‘A few. An’ they was proper loonies, not like her. Seems to me she talks a lot of sense most of the time. Wrong-headed o’ course, bein’ a suffragette, but sense all the same. Not madness.’

He sighed heavily. ‘Well, that’s just what I said. It is a form of lunacy in which the patient can appear sane for most of the time, until suddenly her outbursts become so fantastic as to burst the boundaries of sense. I have considerable experience of it, I can assure you. And Mrs Becket’s behaviour — first in slashing that painting, and then in making those absurd allegations — are classic symptoms of the disease.’

Silence. Ruth stared at him, thinking. A coal fell in the fire and a puff of smoke drifted out into the room. The lines of a kindly understanding smile lingered on his face, but the message of the steely grey eyes was:
there it is, young woman. Believe me or lose your job.

Ruth remembered the prayers she made, every night, and the young ragged girls she sometimes saw, begging in the streets. Rescued, if Sarah Becket was to be believed, not by the Salvation Army, but to be whores for dirty old men.

She said: ‘If she’s mad, like what you say, she ought to be treated for it, not punished. Why ain’t she being released?’

The smile returned, but it was an effort, Ruth could see that. The eyes were grey as winter.

‘A good question. I can see we have recruited some intelligent wardresses this last year. But since you are so intelligent you will understand when I say there are two — no, three — prongs to the answer. Will you bear with me while I go through them?’

‘All right.’

‘Good. Well, the first point is, Mrs Becket was imprisoned for a crime which she claimed was a political protest, and she made no defence of illness or insanity. So she is still guilty, and it is clearly in the interests of justice that she serves her sentence if at all possible. Are you with me so far?’

‘Yes.’

‘Excellent! The second point — and you will please keep this absolutely confidential, because you must appreciate that I should not normally be discussing it with you at all — the second point is that treatment for this form of insanity is, in any case, to confine the patient in a quiet room, which is precisely what happens here in Holloway. As it happens, I am unusually well qualified to carry out this treatment, so Mrs Becket is actually lucky to be here. She should be kept well fed — and we are trying to arrange that also — and in addition I intend to treat her with bromide, which will calm her down and clear her mind.’

‘Bromide?’

‘Yes. Surely you have come across it before? It is a mild sedative, that’s all. It brings calm and comfort to people of troubled mind. That was my third point. So you will see, although we cannot release her, she is receiving the best possible treatment where she is.’

Ruth did not know what to think. On the face of it, the doctor’s arguments made sense, but if the situation was as clear as he said it was, why did he have to explain?

As if reading the doubt in her face, he said: ‘I understand what you are thinking, young woman, believe me. You are wondering why I am telling you all this. Well, let me be honest with you. Mrs Becket made some very serious and unpleasant allegations about me personally the other day, and I would take it very seriously indeed if anyone repeated them. Indeed, I would sue that person for malicious slander, do I make myself clear? As I would sue Mrs Becket, if she were not my patient. But as I am an honest man, I would also like to convince you, as the only other person who heard these allegations, that they are, in fact, untrue. I have no connection with any impropriety whatsoever.’

‘You don’t think . . .’ Ruth hesitated. The man’s candour had captured her. Despite her personal dislike of him she almost believed him now. He seemed truly to want to explain, and he was a doctor, after all. Nonetheless, in her life in the East End she had met too many liars to take everything she heard at face value. Since he had asked her here, she had one more question.

‘Come on, out with it, Miss Harkness. If you have any more questions let’s hear them.’

‘Well . . .’ Ruth swallowed. ‘‘Course it was crazy what Mrs Becket said about you corruptin’ young girls an’ orphans an’ all — anyone could see that . . .’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘But what if not everything she said was true? If she’s got ‘old of the wrong end of the stick, like. If what she said does ‘appen to some o’ them young girls in the orphanage where you work, and you don’t know nothing about it. If it was ‘appening, as you say, it would be a pretty nasty business, like, and someone ought to look into it. Even if she is a few farthings short of a penny she might ‘ave ‘eard something from someone else.’

There was a silence. Maybe it lasted less than a minute, but to Ruth it seemed like ten. Somewhere far away in the prison a door clanged shut, and the wind rattled at the windows of the consulting room. Martin Armstrong tapped his pipe thoughtfully on an ashtray.

‘I suppose it’s possible. But hardly likely. After all, I can hardly trouble the police about the ravings of a madwoman.’

‘I could ‘elp, sir.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Behind the look of amusement and surprise there was definitely a sense of alarm, Ruth thought. Quickly hidden. She pressed on.

‘I could give you a bit of ‘elp. Just to sort of check the story out, like.’

Another silence. The grey eyes watched her, thinking. If he refuses, then maybe he’s got something to hide, she thought. But if he accepts and there is some truth in it — then what?

‘What help were you thinking of, Miss Harkness, exactly?’ The fat fingers toyed unconsciously with the pipe, reflecting the turmoil of the man’s thoughts.

She swallowed again. Why had she said this? ‘To keep an eye on them girls and wardens in the ‘omes, maybe. It would be easier for me to talk to ‘em than for you. An’ I know how girls like that think.’

‘Oh you do, do you?’

Up until then she had almost believed him, but those five words changed her mind. Not the words, but the way he said them. Being a big girl, powerfully built, Ruth had very seldom been looked at in quite that way by men, but she had seen it happen often enough to other girls, and been at once jealous and disgusted. Now, suddenly, there was an unmistakable knowing leer in Dr Armstrong’s eyes, a cynical smile on those puffy lips that made her shiver. She felt as though her apron and thick serge dress were not there any more, and he, the Doctor, could see her standing in front of him as naked as when she washed herself alone in the morning. She watched his eyes and the hairy backs of his hands, carefully, ready to run or fight if he got up and came near her.