Half of the Human Race Page 22

  ‘Not that court, silly,’ Ada gasped, following another paroxysm of mirth. ‘I mean, presented at Court.’ Will asked her how she liked being ‘out’ in society, and she replied that she liked it very well, though the scarcity of young men who could dance was very dismaying.

  ‘Do you dance?’ she asked him, her large delft-blue eyes candid with interest.

  ‘Er, rather poorly, I’m afraid,’ he had said, and on seeing her face drop, added, ‘but I’m quite willing to learn.’ She had smiled broadly, as if he had just given the correct answer. They had chattered on in this fashion for a while; Will had looked around the room at one point and caught his mother’s vigilant eyes upon them.

  Now, back at home, Mrs Maitland was enumerating the accomplishments of Miss Brink: ‘… and I gather she plays the piano to a high standard.’ Will made no comment, hoping his mother would drop the subject. ‘You seemed to be getting along very nicely with her,’ she continued. ‘I thought we might invite her to lunch over Christmas.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ said Will. ‘She probably has plenty of other engagements already.’

  His mother, divesting herself of coat and scarf, turned a sharp look on him. ‘What was wrong with her?’

  Will shook his head. ‘Nothing at all. Quite a pretty girl, I suppose –’

  ‘Then I wonder what the matter is with you. Really, William, you could make more of an effort. Your expression this evening suggested you were suffering a violent … toothache.’

  ‘In which case, Miss Brink made an excellent chloral.’

  They had moved into the living room, where Mrs Maitland clicked her tongue in vexation. ‘Oh – the girl’s forgotten to set the fire, when I specific ally asked her to.’

  ‘At least she remembered to draw the curtains,’ said Eleanor, picking up two split logs from the basket and crouching at the grate. Their mother had paused, momentarily confused by the shifting targets of her indignation. ‘Well, I shall invite Miss Brink in any case. It will at least guarantee some lively company.’

  Eleanor looked round with a mock-affronted expression.

  Will bent down next to her and took the firelighters and wood from her hands. ‘Allow me.’

  He felt his mother’s gaze glowering behind him as he made up the fire. When she realised he was not going to argue, she huffily announced that she would retire for the night, and asked Eleanor to bring her some tea, and left with a brusque goodnight. Will continued heaping twists of newspaper in the grate, miserably amused by his own obstinate nature; he wondered, not for the first time, if he were the only person his mother had not bent to her will. Even while his father was alive, there existed little doubt as to who had the whip hand in their marriage. As a boy he could remember loving his father and fearing his mother; when his father died, the fear went, too, for some reason. He wasn’t sure what he felt for her now. Pity, perhaps, with smaller measures of love and irritation blended in.

  The fire had begun to kindle by the time Eleanor returned from attending to their mother upstairs. Will registered a look from her that provocatively mixed shrewdness with curiosity. She was discerning, like their mother, but without her abrasiveness, having inherited an equable temper from their father. Will was secretly thankful for it.

  ‘Mother despairs of your making a match with anyone,’ she reported, rubbing her hands in front of the fire.

  Will continued staring at the flickering licks of flame. ‘Really,’ he said, in a tone as lifeless as ashes.

  ‘You might at least … humour her. I thought Miss Brink looked very presentable.’

  ‘Oh, more than presentable. I just don’t –’

  ‘– have an ardour for Ada,’ Eleanor said neatly, and Will gave a quiet laugh. After a pause, she spoke again. ‘May I ask – whatever happened to the admirable Constance?’

  Will felt a twist on his heart. He stood up from his crouch and flopped back on one of the sofas. ‘Did you think her “admirable”?’ he said, toying with her question.

  ‘Of course. And you seemed to find her rather more than that. I wondered why you never asked her down again.’

  Will’s mouth twitched in a rueful grimace. ‘Well, there was one good reason not to –’ he raised his eyes in the upward direction of their mother’s brooding presence – ‘but I might have done if – it’s a long story.’

  Eleanor nodded her willingness to listen. Inwardly he hesitated; he had a sincere but guarded affection for his sister – the six years’ difference in age and their respective boarding schools had distanced them. Fixing his gaze on the fireplace, he haltingly related the story of his burgeoning relationship with Connie, his proposal, and the sudden rupture back in September. Its conclusion drew from her a look of horrified surprise, much as it had when he told Tam.

  ‘Six months? Oh …’ She asked if there was anything to be done, and Will shrugged. ‘So you’ve applied to visit her?’

  He pursed his lips, and slowly shook his head. Eleanor looked puzzled, and asked why ever not.

  ‘I’m surprised you need to ask. A fellow asks a girl to marry him, and the girl responds by getting herself arrested and thrown in jail. Surely you must see the insult of it?’

  She furrowed her brow. ‘Why an insult? She asked for time to consider your offer, which only suggests to me how seriously she took it. And then … events may simply have got in the way – does anyone plan to be arrested?’

  ‘She knew the risks, I’m sure. She could have given me an answer before her little … escapade.’

  Eleanor looked measuringly at her brother. ‘And if she had warned you of what she intended to do – would your proposal have stood?’

  Will scowled and fell silent. He had asked himself the same before now, and the very fact that he wavered on the matter had stirred in him a creeping sense of doubt. It came down to this: would he tolerate the idea of his betrothed being a militant suffragette – of her being jailed for it? He knew, but couldn’t quite admit to himself, that he would not. His pride wouldn’t stand for it.

  ‘I don’t want a wife I have to make excuses for,’ he said eventually.

  Eleanor shook her head, puzzled. ‘But you told her – Constance – you told her you loved her. Perhaps that was why she felt able to go through with it, having the assurance of your love.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so keen to defend her,’ he said, irked by this imaginative line of reasoning. ‘All I know is this – I made her a proposal of marriage, and it was rejected in the most mortifying fashion. Am I not entitled to feel aggrieved?’

  ‘As I see it, she hasn’t yet been allowed to give you an answer. It’s possible she hoped you would visit her.’

  ‘That’s rot, Ellie. Her answer was plain enough in her actions. Why on earth should I humble myself to visit her in prison?’

  ‘Because she is in prison! Only imagine how wretched it must be – how alone she must feel.’

  ‘She chose it. She can suffer the consequences.’

  Eleanor looked at him sadly. ‘Too harsh, William. It is unworthy of you. If you no longer wish to marry her, so be it. But she was also your friend. Does she not at least merit the kindness of a visit?’

  Will closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. It was vexing to argue with someone whose good sense and sympathy would not yield to him the comfort of being in the right. Perhaps it was affinity with another woman that had distorted Eleanor’s view of the matter – women so often stuck together. He felt the heat from the fire on his face, cooking his blood. Kindness, yes; a simple draught of human kindness was what he should offer her.

  ‘We were friends,’ he said with a bitter little laugh, ‘until she saw fit to humiliate me. It would be weak, preposterously weak, to go chasing after her.’

  Eleanor stood up, shaking her head. ‘To be kind – that is not a weakness. I’m sure, in time, you will recognise the difference. Goodnight, William.’

  She stepped quietly out of the ro
om, leaving Will to a solitary hour of fireside brooding.

  In her dream Connie could feel herself drowning, whelmed in gulfs as dark and viscous as treacle. Every time she tried to catch her breath she would swallow down another terrible mouthful of it; she couldn’t call for help, and yet she sensed that there were others watching her while she struggled, refusing to pull her to safety from the choking fathoms. How could that be? And then someone did call to her, softly, coaxingly, and she felt her hand being taken. She surfaced with a start into consciousness, and looked about her. This was nowhere she knew. The smell of Holloway was there, but the mattress, the very linen beneath her felt different, and the light in the room was not the dingy light of her cell.

  ‘Connie? It’s me.’ She squinted through her bruised eyes at her old friend hovering by the bedside.

  ‘Lil … – where am I?’ Her voice sounded parched and cracked in her throat. Lily, her face tender with concern, said, ‘You’re in the infirmary. You’ve been very ill, Con, but you’re getting better.’ She drew back to mumble a few words to someone just behind her. Straining her eyes Connie made out Laura, the woman she had been arrested with in Chester Square.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, with a tentative little wave.

  ‘I’m awfully thirsty,’ Connie said weakly. At this, Laura stood up and went off to fetch a jug of water. ‘How long have I been here?’ she asked Lily.

  ‘Four days. You’ve been sleeping most of the time.’ She put her face closer to Connie’s and dropped her voice. ‘D’you not remember what happened?’

  Connie could remember, but she didn’t want to think about it just then. She still felt the soreness in her joints that had forewarned her of the trial to come. A ward matron had stopped at the foot of the bed, and told Lily she had five more minutes. Laura returned carrying a tin jug of water, from which she filled a glass and went round to the other side of the bed. Gently, she lifted the patient’s head to an angle at which she could put the glass to her lips, but as soon as Connie realised what she was doing she jerked her face away.

  ‘No – please, not like that.’

  Lily understood the problem almost immediately. ‘It’s all right, Con. Don’t fret.’ As Laura backed away, Lily helped Connie into an upright position against her pillows; as soon as she was settled, Lily put the glass in her friend’s pale hand. Connie flicked grateful eyes at her, and shakingly raised it to her mouth. As she felt the relieving trickles of water on her tongue, she heard Lily whisper to Laura, ‘She doesn’t want anyone pouring liquid down her.’

  Laura nodded, and in a gesture of apology she smoothed Connie’s hair from her brow. ‘So sorry, dear girl.’

  Connie drained most of the glass, and handed it back. She moved a finger to her lips and felt their dry flakiness. She supposed she must look an awful fright. Lily had taken hold of her hand again.

  ‘Everyone’s been asking after you. They’ve suspended the doctor because of what happened.’

  ‘I seem to remember collapsing. What then?’

  ‘That throat infection you had led to a fever. You probably caught it from one of the tubes. They say the doctor should have known about your condition.’

  Laura said, ‘Well, those devils will never do it to you again – there’s been such an uproar about it.’

  The matron’s footsteps sounded behind them. ‘Scott, Vaughan. Back to your wards now.’

  ‘We’ll come again tomorrow,’ said Lily, who bent over and kissed Connie on the forehead. ‘Get some rest.’

  After they had gone, Connie drifted back to sleep. When she woke again it was evening, and the bars of the infirmary windows cast shadows across the ceiling. Her throat and sinuses still ached, but the awful sweating fever had abated; she knew that she was recovering. When was the moment she knew she would have to join the hunger strike? It was not because she felt an especial injustice at having to wear prison clothes. Whether they put her in the first or the second division of this place seemed hardly to matter; it was still prison. Nor was it because she wished to become a martyr. No, it was a strange compound of reasons. Solidarity had proved stronger than dread; she would not shrink from the ordeal that Lily and the others had endured. Natural defiance played a part. And something else, odd to think of now – an inexplicable conviction that they could not harm her. They would mark it in her eyes, that ‘courage never to submit or yield’, and know that their infamous tortures were nothing to her. Nothing!

  So she had waited there, like a condemned woman, listening to the scenes of violence as the doctors went from cell to cell. On first hearing them outside, she had quickly checked the makeshift barricade piled up against the cell door. It was frightening to hear such a number of wardresses accompanying the doctor – she heard their low mumble, and then they began to force open the door. Fear gave way to rage: ‘If any of you so much as dares to take one step inside this cell, you’ll pay for it.’ The sound of splintering wood rent the air. In spite of her faintness Connie had fought like a maenad when they had tried to restrain her (‘Got a wild one here’) and the language that had boiled up like poison from her throat as they grappled with one another was a shock even to her. She had coped with the indignities of prison life better than she had expected – it was astonishing how one could adapt – but the cold and the smells and the wretched food and the lack of privacy were as nothing to this, this brutal screaming struggle with hands and arms too many and too powerful for her. Faces loomed above her, their expressions closed, like gates. Was it worse to know what was coming, as she lay pinioned to the bed, to know the physical damage that might be wrought by having an unsterilised tube inserted into a nostril? As she felt the cold rubber snaking up into the nasal cavity, she tried to imagine that it was happening elsewhere, that the aproned doctor with his funnel and the nurse standing on a chair with the jug of liquid were operating upon a body not her own; this was not her body going into convulsions, not her eardrums that seemed about to burst, not her throat and breast that heaved against this violation. On and on, it went, she could hear the blood pulsing in her ears until it was no longer possible to dissociate the agony from her own traumatised self. The pain was beating on the walls of her chest so fiercely she thought they would crack.

  When it was over, she lay there, shivering, eyes streaming. Mucus clogged her nostrils, and her mouth felt sour from the vomiting she had endured immediately afterwards. Her cheeks felt sore and swollen in a way that reminded her of when she had the mumps as a girl. She felt tearful, but her throat already hurt too much to give way. Some hours later, she jumped at the rattle of the keys at her door, and tensed herself against the return of her tormentors. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the doorway.

  ‘It’s only me, dear,’ said Miss Ewell, who had been kind to her these past months. She had brought her an extra blanket.

  Connie slumped back onto her bed. ‘I thought –’ She laughed in spite of herself. ‘I thought it might be them again. With pudding.’ Miss Ewell didn’t laugh. In the fading light Connie saw that her eyes were glistening. She watched as the wardress opened the blanket and laid it over her. ‘Were you there?’

  She sensed Miss Ewell stiffen at the question. ‘I’ve asked to be – excused that duty.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it is barbarous,’ she said, casting her eyes down. After some moments she spoke again. ‘You’re shivering still.’

  ‘I think … I’m not quite well. Would you fetch a doctor?’

  Miss Ewell nodded, and put a hand to Connie’s burning forehead. She had turned for the door when Connie, propping herself on her elbows, called to her.

  ‘One thing – not that doctor.’

  By the following morning a throat infection had been diagnosed, and Connie was transferred to the infirmary.

  A few days after Lily and Laura had been, Connie had another visitor. Though she had not seen Marianne Garnett in several months, that lady had seldom been far from her thoughts. Even as the WSPU began to brea
k up, Marianne was making her name an increasingly bitter pill in the mouth of the Liberal government. Connie was pleased to see that her aura of glamorous defiance also remained intact.

  ‘How’s our brave soldier?’ said Marianne, bending down to kiss her. Connie suddenly felt aware of her own smell: the sweetish odour of corruption that always accompanied a recovering hunger-striker.

  ‘The better for seeing you,’ she smiled.

  ‘Your illness has caused quite a scandal. It seems incredible that the doctor didn’t check your medical records. Lily told me that you probably diagnosed it before he did.’

  ‘Rheumatic fever,’ said Connie. ‘I had it quite severely as a girl. It resulted in heart trouble – a “murmur” they called it.’

  ‘A murmur? Sounds almost romantic – except that it might have killed you. Well, a letter has been sent to McKenna, and another to The Times. We have some eminent names from the medical profession on our side now. We’ll make them pay for this.’ She looked almost transported by the prospect, but then seemed to recall that this was not the purpose of her visit. ‘Forgive me, my dear. That is for another time. Here, I’ve some things for you.’

  She had brought with her a small cardboard box, from which she produced a bottle of cognac, a packet of Lipton’s tea, a bar of chocolate, a bag of tangerines and an old edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems.

  ‘What a bounty,’ Connie said. ‘It’s very kind of you.’ She picked up the Dickinson and riffled its pages. On the flyleaf Marianne’s own name was girlishly inscribed.

  ‘To improve the shining hour,’ said Marianne with a smile. ‘I used to read a good deal myself, before I had children.’

  Connie looked up at her. ‘You must miss them terribly – in here.’

  Marianne shrugged philosophically. ‘It’s hard, of course. But it will seem a small sacrifice to have made in the long run. And they’re not abandoned, in any case – they have their father, and a nanny.’

  ‘Do you suppose we’ll get visits over Christmas?’ Connie asked.