The Balliols Read online

  In a week, at the latest in ten days, they’d let her go, she and the rest of the Thirteen Club would have their first monthly lunch. They’d go round to the W.S.M. offices, they’d be weak, ill, tired. They wouldn’t make a sensational appearance in the Ballroom, but there’d be a new look for her in Aunt Stella’s eyes. There’d be approval, and respect; a recognition of equality.

  Aunt Stella would be able to take her into her confidence now; would cease to look on her as the niece for whom she had found employment, just because she was niece; would accept her as a friend; would discuss her plans with her; would say, “I’m thinking of doing this: now does it strike you…? “A friend to whom she could take her own problems, on whom she could rely for sympathy and guidance. It would be wonderful to have Aunt Stella as a friend. She would be proud of her friendship, a friendship that she had earned.

  Thus she kept up her spirit during the long three hours, before the knock came on the door; the shouted “Are you all right?”, the flap pulled back; the eye of vigilance peered through the narrow slit.

  But it was less easy, later, when the light was out; when she lay cold, stiff, hungry, on the hard knobbly mattress, trying to tuck her legs under her so that the sheet could be wrapped under her toes. Her eyelids ached for sleep, but the cold and stiffness of her body kept waking her when she dozed off. She always woke colder and stiffer.

  “And this is only the first day. How in heaven’s name am I going to manage another nine?”

  She slept scarcely three hours through the night. She waited, prayerfully, for the barred slit of the window to lighten. It would be better when the day had once begun. There would be the scrubbing of the floor to warm her. When the clanging of bells and the tramp of feet roused her to the day’s work she flung back the blankets, as eagerly as she would in midsummer on a seaside-holiday, with the day stretching ahead of her, prodigal of entertainment.

  But when she jumped to her feet her knees were so weak, her head so dizzy, that she staggered. But for the narrowness of the room she would have fallen. She rested her forehead against the wall and leant there breathing slowly, wondering whence she would draw the strength and courage to face the long hours of work and waiting.

  By the time she had finished the scrubbing and tidying of the room, she was warm, but so weak that a wolfish hunger assailed her at the sight of the bowl of thin, weak gruel. The pouring of it away with the slops demanded more courage than she had ever been called upon to exercise.

  “Well, that’s that,” she thought, as she heard it splash at the bottom of the pail.

  She sat upon her bed. Eight-thirty. At Ilex the long breakfast table would be spread. On the revolving centre there would be toast, butter, a new cottage loaf with brown, crisp crusts. There would be marmalade and honey, some kind of jam. On the sideboard would be a teapot and a coffee jug. There would be an aluminium stand, two little methylated flames would be flickering under covered dishes. Under the covers would be eggs, sausages, a haddock, kidneys. A fire would be burning brightly. There would be soft seats to the high-backed chairs. Through the open windows would come the sound of birds and the scent of spring.

  All that day, whether she was lined up for Chapel, whether she was listening to the Chaplain’s address, whether she was sewing in her cell, her imagination presented her picture after picture of the life that three days ago had been still hers. She did not think; construct arguments; carry on a conversation with herself, explain herself to herself in words. Before her sleep-wearied eyes a succession of pictures passed.

  A midsummer day; she was lying in a punt on cushions, in a light cotton frock; a bag of cherries was at her side.

  It was winter: dinner was just over; the women had left the men; she was settling herself in a deep armchair before the fire; her hostess was beginning to make the coffee.

  Her father was taking her to lunch; it had been a cold autumn day; she had been glad to escape from the windswept Strand into the bright shelter of the Savoy; on all sides of her were well-dressed men and women; there was a buzz of talk; of laughter; people were smiling at one another; there was a vase of red carnations on the table. Her father had handed her a long embossed menu. “I’ll choose. We’ll have some cold grouse and Japanese salad later on. An omelette of some kind would be the best thing to start with.”

  She had been for a long country walk in Devonshire; she and another girl; it had been a warm day for March; they were red-cheeked and tired; they had stopped at a farm that advertised “Cream Teas”; a trimly-aproned woman spread the table; splits, strawberry jam; a cottage loaf; a great bowl of thick, clotted cream; rock cakes, brown and turreted.

  She had come in from an afternoon of shopping; she had flung her parcels on the bed. She had hurried down the passage to the bathroom; she had turned on the taps; quickly she had pulled off her clothes; soon she would be lying back relaxed in that cleansing warmth.

  Pictures of food and warmth and comfort; where people were happy and at ease. All day long the procession passed before her eyes.

  Every third day the prisoners were allowed half-an-hour’s exercise. It was one of those March days that surprise you with a sense of summer. The sky was blue; soft, dove-coloured clouds drifted across it over the harsh outline of the tall, forbidding buildings that shut in the prison square. Those same clouds were floating over the heads of happy people. Lucy had slept little better than on the previous night. There was no elasticity in her knees and ankles. They were like stones, she walked stiffly from the hips. The person four feet in front of her whispered over her shoulder the one word “Resolute!” It was the pass-word that the Thirteen had agreed upon. Both as a vow and a consolation; a saying: “Yes, I’m hunger striking. Be resolute. I know you are, too.” “Resolute,” whispered Lucy over her shoulder.

  The knowledge that she was entitled to use the password braced her lagging spirits. She had held to her fort, so far. She closed her eyes. She pictured a time when the need to say “Resolute” had passed; when she would be walking into the W.S.M. office; when Aunt Stella would be looking at her with that new look in her eyes: a new tenderness, a new respect. Her heart-beat quickened; but the picture blurred. The dizziness in her head grew louder; her legs weakened, seemed to be going sideways under her; collapsing like a pack of cards. The buzzing became a roar of an express train. She was falling under it: falling, falling. She gave a cry, she fell.

  A harsh voice sounded in her ears. “Is this another of these absurd strikers?” She forced her eyelids open. A man’s face, moustached, red-cheeked, with little bright, dark eyes, was bending over her. A wardress was at her side. The hard mattress was beneath her. She was very cold, very stiff, very weak. She closed her eyes again.

  “How many of these fanatics are there here?” The harsh voice was asking. “Thirteen? What a suitable number. They’re probably all behaving in the same way. We shall have the whole lot of them on our hands in a few days. Watch them carefully. See if they’re eating. If they’re not eating, tell me. We’ll have them really ill if we’re not careful. There’s nothing wrong with them at the moment. There’s nothing wrong with this girl. Fetch her some fruit, Brand’s Essence, chicken, some decent coffee.”

  Lucy lay still and silent, with her eyes half-closed, summoning back her senses, trying to summon back her strength. What was it they were going to do? Force food on her? She had heard of that: she had read of that. But she hadn’t believed that it could happen, not really; not to her. What was it that they would do? You couldn’t make a person eat. She’d tried to feed a puppy with medicine. It had taken three people to do it. And that had only been a teaspoonful. What was it that they were going to do to her?

  She waited, limp and relaxed on the hard plank. There was the sound of footsteps in the passage. Two wardresses came in, they were carrying a plate of fruit, a plate of chicken with a slice of ham on it. Fragrant steam came from the lid of a coffee-pot.

  “Come along, my dear. We’ve ordered you an especially nice dinner, to
make you well again.”

  The sight of the good appetizing food, the smell of the rich coffee was like the realization of one of her dream pictures. She half sat up. Half started to stretch over the table.

  Then she remembered: this was not a dream. This was reality. They were tempting her; trying to make her think she was out of prison. But she wasn’t. This was just a trick. She turned over to the wall.

  The two wardresses exchanged a glance.

  “Very well, my dear, if you don’t feel well enough now, you will, probably, later on. We’ll come back. See you about tea-time. Get a good rest now, won’t you?”

  It was much harder when she was alone. When the wardresses were there, she had their opposition to fight against. But now she was her own opponent. There was no one but herself to spy against her weakness. She could have sipped the coffee. No one need have known. There was a small fleck of chicken. She could have taken that; no one would have noticed. But she mustn’t, she must keep her vow. Resolute. She turned her face towards the wall. She shut her eyes. Had there ever really been a time when she had been happy and warm? Among people who cared for her? Had she ever been able to believe in the world as a friendly place? Was that world waiting for her outside this place: her family, her friends, Aunt Stella? Would they make it up to her for all this when it was over? Would that new look really come into Aunt Stella’s eyes?

  The tears surged into her eyes; trembled on her eyelashes, fell in long trickles along her cheeks. She began to sob with slow, heavy, helpless gasps. The effort weakened her. Her tiredness overcame the chilled numbness of her body. She fell asleep.

  She was woken by the sound of voices. The wardresses had come back into the room. They were looking at the untouched food, commenting on it. “We’ll have to fetch the doctor.”

  In five minutes they were back. They had brought four others with them. Before Lucy realized what was happening to her, she had been turned over on her back. Her ankles, her wrists, held. Her head forced back.

  “So my patient’s ready, is she?” the loud, hearty voice of the doctor was saying.

  He had brought an assistant with him. They were dressed in white coats, as for an operation. They were wearing rubber gloves. From the table came the tinkle of instruments. What were they going to do? What were they going to do?

  The doctor leant over her. He was tall. He was handsome, ruddy-complexioned, bright-eyed; an insolent, frank expression. The kind of man who would get elected to a club committee; who played games well; who drank his share without going beyond the limit; who liked a joke; and a good evening. A man’s man, in fact. The kind of man who would be successful with a certain kind of woman; who would get his rebuffs but would succeed through insolence and dash; who relished opposition. He was the kind of man by whom Lucy would have most hated to be made love to; at whose touch she would have felt real revulsion. For which very reason she was attracting him. There was a gloating, brutal look on his face as he looked down at her; the kind of look that must come into his face when he was on the brink of a long-delayed success. “He’s going to enjoy this,” thought Lucy. She shut her eyes.

  She scarcely knew what happened. She was too weak to fight. Her wrists and ankles were firmly held. A pillow had been pressed across her stomach. She tried to turn away her head, but a hand forced it back. She tried to close her lips, but indiarubber-covered fingers forced them apart. She clenched her teeth but a steel instrument was forced between a gap in them. A screw was turned, her jaws were forced open and held there by the metal gag. There was the intolerable suffocating sensation of a tube being forced down her throat. She wanted to be sick, but could not. Food was being forced into her stomach. It was warm, it comforted her. She ceased to struggle. She lay limp. The tube was withdrawn. The steel gag loosened. Her ankles and her wrists were free again.

  “The same dose to be repeated twice a day till you stop being a silly girl,” the doctor said.

  She pulled away, her face turned against the wall. Her mouth and gums were bleeding, her back was bruised. But it was less the physical pain than the sense of personal degradation that she should have been handled in such a way, by such a man, that made her burst into hysterical, uncontrolled sobbing.

  Every morning and every evening it went on like that. There was no pretence now of offering her dainties. She was served with the usual pint of gruel. A wardress watched her. If the food was not eaten the doctor was promptly summoned. He entered in the same hearty, truculently masculine manner. There was the same confident, brutal, gloating expression on his face. He knew, through his experience of women, how she loathed being handled by him. Her revulsion heightened his relish. Each morning she dreaded his visit more. Sometimes she would make no resistance; merely lie supine, apparently indifferent. At other times she would kick and struggle, trying to make it more difficult for him, hurting herself the more. Now and again she would assume a limp quiescence, so that she should take the doctors and the wardresses off their guard with a sudden twist of the head or body.

  When the doctors left her, she would lie limp and bruised, her face turned stubbornly to the wall. But in spite of the bruises on her body, of the scratches on her mouth, she realized with a sick foreboding that the food was having its effect on her; that she no longer felt weak and cold as she had on those first two days. She slept at nights. In the prison square she walked with an elastic tread. There was no use in her pretending to deny that she was now fit physically to endure her month of prison; that the authorities would not have any need to discharge her on that account. The knowledge frightened her. For though the food had strengthened her, the mental misery, the sense of personal shame and degradation that the forcible feeding woke in her grew daily stronger. And there was a time coming very shortly now, when she would be incapable of resisting that particular kind of misery.

  For two days every month she was and knew herself to be an unbalanced person. She was aware of it, and took account of it. She avoided strain as far as possible, she postponed every important decision; she said to herself: “For forty-eight hours you are not yourself. Decide nothing, postpone everything, wait.” Her mother had told her not to worry; that some girls were like that; others weren’t. That it meant nothing, that it did not matter, that as soon as she married and had children that particular kind of strain would cease. “Till then don’t let yourself be worried at that time.” And that’s what she had imagined too, then; when she was with friends. But here.…

  The realization of this fresh and unlooked-for trial filled her with panic. She would never in that mood be able to face the ordeal. She would never be able to, never, never! How soon was it now? Three days: two days: to-morrow, possibly. At the most it could not be more than four. In panic she kept count of the passing hours; fulfilled the prison routine, the scrubbing, the slops, the inspection, the Chapel Parade, the sewing; accepted the feeding almost as a matter of course, since the real test was still to come. She was helpless, hopeless, defeat was inevitable. There was no chance of a release now. She would have to yield.

  When the fatal morning came, when she woke with a sick headache and drear, searing pain, she did her best to gather her strength together. To be brave, to make the last fight. But in her imagination she had faced and accepted defeat so often, that when the wardresses pinioned her on the bed, when she saw grinning above her the loathed and mocking face, she broke down.

  “Give me food. It’s all right, I’ll eat.”

  With an arm flung across her eyes, she shut out from her vision the smile of triumph on that gloating face; such a smile of triumph as he must show when a long-sought conquest dropped her last defence.

  Two days later, recovered now, strengthened, despising her weakness, wondering how she could have been so childish, she joined the exercise file upon the prison square. She was sick with shame. She would have no right now to repeat the password “Resolute.” To her surprise, however, none of the other twelve was there.

  Later she asked a wardress the
explanation. Had they been moved to another prison?

  Moved into another place altogether, she was told. Been set free, they had been. There had been such a fuss in the paper, so many questions asked in the House about treatment of prisoners, that all suffragettes on hunger strike had been released.

  “When had they gone?” she asked.

  “Yesterday morning.”

  Yesterday morning! If she had only hung on for another day she would have been released.

  “Were they all released?”