A Petrol Scented Spring (4 page)

He is an intelligent man. More so than most doctors. There were some who graduated with better marks, but they were not combining their studies with supporting themselves as a grocer's apprentice. Until now his grasp of what ails his patients has been swift and certain. Prisoner Scott is a challenge to his professional competence. He does not understand her. If she were ugly, or old, he would diagnose her easily, but if she were ugly or old she would be a different woman physiologically. No less than her undergrown heart or her locked bowels, her beauty is a piece of the puzzle, suggesting she is well suited to breeding, and likely to attract the most virile mate. Why, then, is she not married? Neurosis? Inversion? Or an inferior pool of masculine acquaintance?

He is aware of the talking cure. Unscientific mumbo-jumbo, in his opinion, but he is pragmatic enough to scavenge the useful techniques of any bankrupt methodology. And after that harpy caught pneumonia four months ago, he needs nothing less than a cure: Prisoner Scott, sleek as a farm cat, emerging from prison after serving the full nine months. She must be made to see the limits of feminine intellect and brought to her true womanly nature. She will be grateful, in the end.

The Scott family know nothing. Harriet is reduced to writing pleading letters to the Prison Commission, asking the where­abouts of her daughter. For all the good that does her. The answer comes from elsewhere. Perth Suffrage Society boasts barely a dozen members but it's a small town, word gets around. Muriel Scott packs her bag and boards the train. That night she addresses an open-air rally at Perth's High Street Port, the first of many in these long, warm midsummer evenings. The crowd is volatile. Supporters from Perth, Dundee and Fife are outnumbered by purple-palmed dye-workers, laundry maids, bleachers, distillery hands, insurance clerks, barefoot children, and a gang of youths there to make a nuisance of themselves. After the speeches they march through town and across the grassy common to the prison. A smallish crowd at first, but growing bigger as folk get to hear of the nightly entertainment. Muriel will become adept at putting down hecklers. She'll also get better at dodging flying vegetables. Feeling in the town is against the suffragettes, but not so much that the locals want the fun to stop. Doctor Watson is a blow-in – worse, a west-coaster – so they're not overly partial to him either. They're proud of Perth, and don't care to see its name dragged through the dirt with lurid headlines about cruelty to women. And when all's said and done, everybody likes a sing-song.
Scots
Whae Hae, A Man's a Man for a' That
. What does it matter if the women change the words a wee bittie?

 

She hears sounds in the night, she tells him. Voices outside the gaol.

He says her mind is playing tricks on her.

Women's voices, she says.

He tells her hallucination is one of the symptoms of starvation.

But she is not starving, thanks to his torture, so why should she hallucinate?

She arrived at the prison in a severely weakened state. By feeding her he has arrested her decline, but she will not recover fully without rest.

Rest! He has her flat on her back twenty-four hours a day. She is rested enough. It is exercise she needs.

His mouth sets. They have been over this before.

She demands to see the prison rules.

He says the rules are written for healthy prisoners.

She is being denied her right to regular exercise. By refusing to let her petition the Prison Commissioners, he thinks to conceal this fact from his superiors.

He says the Commissioners fully endorse his actions.

But they won't like the presence of protesters outside the gaol?

He repeats, she is imagining things. Or dreaming them, perhaps.

Dreaming! How can she dream when she doesn't sleep? When she counts every second of the hours through the night?

He insists she is mistaken. She sleeps soundly. He turns to the wardress: is that not so?

‘Aye, Doctor.'

She knows he is lying. Yet what if her longing could conjure voices out of the air . . .?

He tells her these fancies drain her strength. She must give them up.

 

In bed, prevented from reading or writing, every square inch of her surroundings scrutinised and committed to memory: how is she to get through the days? The temptation to change something, anything, is overwhelming. But the only change within reach, to start eating, would be self-defeating in every way. Yes, she'd exchange the hospital for a cell, but who would visit her? They would say they understood, but they'd be so disappointed, and afraid of putting themselves to the test. She would become an emblem of failure, and they would shun her.

She doesn't know if she truly believes this. That's the worst of isolation. To escape the boredom and the hostility of her captors, she retreats inside her head. But cut off from the world of facts and proof, her head too is a perilous space. At school, after the family moved back from Dum Dum, her classmates would titter at her accent, mocking her when she forgot and said
ayah
or
memsahib
or
punkah wallah
. Within a month they had tired of tormenting her but, for a long time after, she was prone to the fear that this or that friend had turned against her. Surreptitiously she would watch them, noting the way they whispered, their glances brushing hers but not connecting. Minutes later, she'd be laughing with them, and the others would never guess the passionate, recriminatory speeches she had made to them in her head. She has not thought of this in years, and still her chest is hot with remembered hurt. She must resist such childishness. It is just what the doctor wants. She is to look on him as a father figure, acting in her best interests. Ha! The cruellest man she knows. His harsh voice, his pitiless hands, the way his jaw grits when she resists. The rage she senses boiling within him.

She will not think of him.

When he comes, instinct takes over. She fixes her attention on what he is doing at that precise moment, and how to thwart him. The same with his speech. She pinpoints the weakness in what he has said, how the words can be turned or mocked. It's a question of survival. There's never time to look at the whole man, to wonder
who is he outside this moment?
And yet, when he has gone, she finds every mole, every fingernail, every stitch in his clothes, the grain of his voice in calm and in anger, all of it committed to memory. She rehearses what she will say to him, new ways of pouring scorn on him, reminding him that he is the tool of an immoral government. To act as he does, suppressing another's freedom because he is told to, quite without political conviction, makes him the worst kind of slave. And in her head he replies that he has sworn an oath to keep his patients alive. As for her freedom: she knew the law. It was her free choice to break it. The argument goes back and forth until she defeats him, or until he leaves her tongue-tied and humiliated. Then the rehearsal seems less a preparation for ordeals ahead, and more a surrender to enemy occupation. Then she wonders if this, too, is part of his plan.

So she will not think of him. But she must think of
something
. It is too easy to let her thoughts trickle away, leaving a dull vacancy. Day, night, the same: abed but not weary, half in, half out of shallow sleep. Her dreams are as vivid to her as anything that happens while she is awake. Sometimes her body seems the prison. Some nights her soul slips free of its carcass to drift like thistledown in the air.

She compiles a list of all those who love her. Muriel, her mother, Isabella, Alice, Agnes, her brother William. Dear Ethel, Grace, Fanny, Annie, Janie, Flora . . . So many people. She must take heart from that. They admire her resourcefulness, the way she casts off her sober schoolmistress demeanour and makes herself such an infernal nuisance, with such a genius for righteous cheek. Her exploits are famous. That time she pulled the communication cord of the train taking her back to gaol in Edinburgh, then broke a window in the taxi, telling her captors to send the bill to the Home Secretary. She smiles at the memory. But it is lonely, being a heroine, obliged to generate an endless supply of witty and ingenious acts of defiance. Her fellow campaigners are sure she has the inner strength to withstand the feeding. Sometimes this thought lends her that strength. Other times she thinks: how can they sit at home with their mothers and sisters, their newspapers and letters and books, and think they
know
? She does not want them to worry over her, but their unshakeable confidence makes the loneliness much worse. In her reveries they place a hand on her shoulder, and even then she can't admit the truth.

There are hours when she fears she is going mad.

The Doctor sees Arabella three times a day. At 8.00 am and 5.00 pm to feed her, and once in between, usually mid-morning, when he comes in his black frock coat to take her pulse and temperature and sound her chest.

On the fifth day – or is it the sixth? Already she's not sure – she asks if she is supposed to pretend he is someone else when he comes in his frock coat? Does he think she will forget what he did to her this morning, clad in his butcher's apron?

He asks the wardress if she has slept. (She has.)

She informs him that from now on she will call him Doctor Savage, so both of them can keep in mind what he is.

He asks the wardress if she has opened her bowels? (She has not.)

She says, by rights, he should be serving a prison sentence himself.

He tells the wardress to fetch the calomel from Doctor Lindsay.

The wardress is surprised. Matron's instructions are to remain with the prisoner at all times. Matron and the doctor do not like each other. The Governor prefers Matron but is too spineless to back her in a fight.

For the first time since Arabella's arrival, doctor and prisoner are alone.

Outside it's a hot day. The north-facing windows show a cloudless blue sky, bleached by the invisible sun. The ward is bright. The mattress ticking on the unmade beds shows its stains very clearly. In her boredom, she has counted the shadowed indentations in the whitewashed walls. There is a smell of carbolic, to her ever-suggestive of the dirt it has been used to vanquish. The doctor takes the wardress's chair. His face has acquired a few freckles.

‘You're a schoolteacher—'

What is she supposed to answer to that? He knows full well she is.

‘—
were
a schoolteacher, I should say.'

‘I've been put on the reserve list, after agreeing to leave militant action to others.'

He exhales, the breath making a derisive sound in his nose. ‘And your word's worth so little?'

‘Since Kelso I've done nothing illegal.'

‘You were arrested at a by-election meeting.'

‘Holding a political opinion is not yet against the law.'

She is waiting for him to make another derogatory remark about politics. Instead, he says, ‘Your sister, is she a teacher?'

Instantly she is on her guard. ‘One of my sisters.'

‘The one you live with—'

It was in the newspapers, but still. She says nothing.

‘—and she's of your mind, about all this?'

‘She believes in votes for women.'

He takes the stethoscope out of his leather bag. ‘Dull brown hair, not so tall?'

‘You've seen her?' She is horrified. ‘
In
here?
'

He places the chest piece inside the neck of her nightdress. ‘Out there, on her soapbox.'

She is not going mad. The voices are real.

‘How did she look?'

‘Breathe in.'

She hesitates before complying.

‘Like you.' His mouth forms a judicious shape. ‘Less well-favoured.' He pauses to move the chest piece around her breast, ‘And out.'

She breathes out. ‘Would you . . .'

‘No,' he says, cutting her off.

‘Just send her my love.'

‘I said no. And again: in.'

He would not have mentioned Muriel for nothing. It's a gambit. Well, she may give him what he wants, but only if he agrees to carry a message.

‘And out.' He writes on the chart in his spiky, almost italic hand. ‘You have a presystolic
bruit
, a heart murmur. Your sister is healthy?'

‘Perfectly.'

‘She wouldn't want you to put your life in danger.'

‘That's exactly what she wants.'

‘If she loves you . . .'

‘
She would have me remain true to my principles. That is what love means to us.'

‘And if somebody burns to death, out of your love?'

‘No one has.'

‘Yet.' He tucks the thermometer under her arm. ‘So I'm a savage and you're an instrument of love. For women.'

‘And for men who would take women as their equals.'

Another derisive breath. ‘You think men want to meet women as equals?'

‘Some men.'

‘They know you want to hear them say so.'

This stings as if she had a particular man in mind.

What is that smell? Something intimately foul. Too much to hope it might be him. What she wouldn't give for a toothbrush to rid her mouth of this acrid taste. Or a bath. Even a bed wash. But what's the use? In a few hours he will feed her, and she will be drenched in vomit again.

Out of nowhere he says, ‘Two sisters taught at the school I went to.'

‘And were they supporters of women's votes?'

Snitting
, Muriel used to call this sort of riposte when they were children. But if he gives her less autonomy than a two-year-old, what does he expect?

‘They opened the door to another world.'

Such a queer, wistful note in his voice.

She looks up from the filthy nest of her matted hair. He has cut himself shaving, a tiny nick under his right ear. Neat ears, for a man. Yesterday, when he turned in front of the window, the sun shone clean through the pink cartilage.

He says quietly, ‘If you wished to write to her . . .'

Her face lights up.

‘. . . I can't permit you to set pen to paper, but I could write a short note at your dictation.'

Why would it be this easy?

‘You think she'll succeed where you have not, in getting me to eat.'

His face closes. ‘As you wish.' He removes the thermometer, noting the temperature on his chart.

‘I didn't say I didn't want to.' The words stick in her throat but she forces them out, ‘It would be good of you.'

He has paper in his leather bag. Brought specially for this, or always carried with him? Don't ask. No more barbs. Not until he's posted the letter.

‘So,' he says. ‘Dear Muriel.'

‘
My
dear Muriel.'

My dear Muriel, I know how anxious you must be
without news of me, your imagination running riot . . .

His look says she is trying his patience. ‘Stick to practical matters.'

But even
practical matters
are subject to censorship. He will allow no reference to the feeding. She wants Muriel to make arrangements for when she gets out of gaol, some sympathiser's house where she can convalesce. Her appearance will be too shockingly altered for her to go home. This sentence, too, he refuses. He lets her give details of how she came to be arrested, then a message to her mother, begging her not to worry too much. Talking to her sister, her voice softens, her carapace dissolving in the pity she will only accept from this one source.
Oh Muriel
. For a minute or so he writes at her dictation, the nib's scratch across the paper following her voice, his breathing audible with the effort of keeping up. She slows down for him. Such a strange feeling, the two of them cooperating like this. She wants a solicitor to challenge the legality of the feeding.

He has lost his temper several times over the past few days, but she still can't predict when he will snap.

‘The letter is long enough.'

‘It's hardly begun.'

‘Don't overtax the Governor's goodwill. Or mine.'

Scolded like a naughty child. Was this his plan all along, this new way of making her feel small? Let it be a lesson, she thinks. No more truces.

The letter must be signed off. He suggests
yours sincerely
. She snorts. She is not writing to her bank agent. She wants
with love to all
, which he accepts, followed by
yours ever the same
. His eyes narrow. What does that mean? Exactly what it says: her affections are constant. It is how she always ends her letters, omitting it would strike her sister as most peculiar. Which is true, as far as it goes, but he's right to be suspicious. The phrase alludes to her commitment to the cause. Grudgingly, he transcribes it.

She notices the way he is bent over the paper. She is lying on her side to read the words as he writes. Their heads are almost touching.

The wardress comes back with the mercurous chloride. A laxative. To be added to her next feed.

 

A man and a woman conversing daily, mistrustful at first, but with increasing familiarity as the weeks pass. Anyone can see where this is leading.

And when the man has complete knowledge of the woman's body, complete freedom to touch her mouth, breasts, genitals, anus? When he subjects her urine to chemical analysis, and forces her jaws apart with a metal gag. Where does
that
lead?

 

She hears the footsteps first. Two doctors, six wardresses. Up the stairs and along the passage. Every morning and evening, and still her heart lurches. She turns face-down on the thin mattress, clinging to the bed-rail, squeezing her eyes shut. Later she will wonder if she might have shamed him by looking him in the face, but when it matters she is powerless. Calloused fingers loosen her grip, their nails dig into her flesh, prising her hands from the rail. They turn her onto her back and pin her with their weight, their lousy bodies, their suffocating stink. She opens her eyes and there is Doctor Lindsay with his smirk to remind her how her nightgown gapes in the struggle. How the fabric, soaked by spilled liquid, clings to her form. But she will not acknowledge this because her task is to resist, and if she thought about the violation she would die of shame.

And then she sees Doctor Watson in his butcher's overall, greasing the rubber tube, and all rational thought flies from her head. He forces the gag between her teeth. She bites down on it, pitting tooth enamel against tempered steel. It prises her jaws so wide she fears the bone will snap. His fingers press on her tongue. He pushes the tube down her throat, grazing the sides. She retches and chokes, but still he pays it in, inch after inch, until it finds her stomach and she spasms. He pours the liquid down the tube. More and more of it − too much! − her stomach convulsing to expel it, so it burns a path down her nose. Quick fingers pinch her nostrils. Doctor Lindsay yanks out the gag and clamps his hand over her mouth.

‘Swallow
.
'

Swallow her own vomit, he means. But there are things the body will not do, instincts stronger than the will, even the will to life itself. She cannot swallow. And she cannot breathe. Panic beats its wings inside her chest. And then the man I will marry in two years' time says ‘We will let you breathe when we see you going purple'. Her lungs are bursting. She knows she will die. And finally she looks into his eyes and

 

Oh God, I don't know, I don
't know. I don't want to know.