The Unseen (42 page)

So she sits, when she’s too tired to fight any more. Sits with her back to the door and the rough wooden floorboards snagging the skin on the backs of her legs. Her throat is burning, her skull wrapped around with tight bands of tension and pain. She tries to think of George, of the way she feels when she is with him. The life he seems to breathe; the soul of her, drawn patiently from the hard kernel inside by his smile and the touch and the taste of him. She tries to think of her mother – her mother as she was, before the consumption; or Tess on the first afternoon they sneaked out to a
public meeting, with her delight painting her face like a rainbow. But the thoughts won’t stay to comfort her. George slips away into silhouette, into shadow, as if distant in her memory. She is left with his outline only, as if he sat with the sun always behind him, and her eyes could not cope with the light. Sickness and death take her mother; gaol, and now the workhouse, take Tess. Cat is back in her cell, with chill, clammy walls and the stink of piss and shit from the pail in the corner; with lice scurrying over her scalp, driving her wild with itching. They were in the bedding. In the ticking of the mattress, the seams and stitching of the meagre blankets. She did not think to check – had never before been anywhere where lice lay in wait like that; waxy grey speckles to swarm the unwary. The stone walls were damp; thick mildew crawled up them, shading the mortar black.

The working-class girls had none of the soft treatment of their middle- and upper-class comrades. No privileges, no luxuries. They were not allowed to write letters, or wear their own clothes. They were allowed out of the cell block for one hour a day, to shuffle around a cramped cobbled yard. Cat and Tess walked together, huddled close, their fingers meshed. Cat tried to make Tess laugh by sharing gossip and making up wild stories about the wardresses, and the other prisoners, and the vast feasts of cake they would eat upon their release. One wardress was the most feared by all the women. She was built like a snake, thin and wiry. All sinew and bone; no hint of a curve to soften her hips or bust. Her face was hard. She had dark hair which she pinned back severely; cold blue eyes; a cruel, lipless mouth turned up at the corners in an expression that had nothing to do with good humour; and a sharp, pointed nose. Cat dubbed her The Crow for this reason, and made up mocking rhymes about her in the long hours she was alone, to sing to Tess as they walked around the yard. Tess didn’t laugh, but she managed to smile. Her eyes were always full of tears, swollen and pink.

The wardresses slapped them for insubordination – a charge that
encompassed walking too slowly, or too fast, coughing too much, or swearing, blaspheming, whistling, singing, talking back. By the second morning of her three-month sentence, Cat, who had never been struck in her life before, had a split lip, and a wobbly tooth behind it. Word passed around quickly that they had to go on strike against this treatment. This was what they did – suffragettes. They ought to have been classed as political prisoners, not common criminals. They ought to have been in better accommodation, with better food and treatment, and the privileges due to them. They were told all this by the WSPU before they were sentenced. Cat knew it as she passed through the massive stone gates of Holloway, crenellated like a fairy-tale castle, but with no happy endings inside. They had to demand these things, and they had to refuse to eat until they got them or were allowed to go free. Cat didn’t mind the closed-in space. Not at first. It did not bother her, the first night that the door was locked. She hadn’t known then what it meant. She had not tested the boundaries of her new world, and found out how close they were, how much they could hurt.

The first day without food was a blessing. The bread was always hard and stale, the soup little more than the water in which the wardresses had cooked their vegetables. Thin and bad-smelling. Cat was used to the good food of Broughton Street, and before that the home cooking of her mother. She could hardly touch this stuff without retching. Her stomach soon felt hot, and knotted itself in protest, but she was more than able to ignore it. The food she did not eat was left to go foul. The wardresses slapped her for her rebellion; The Crow twisted her arm up behind her back and yanked her around her cell by her hair. She bore it all, because they couldn’t force her to eat. They couldn’t win. Five days this went on, and by the sixth she couldn’t get up from the mattress. The cells all around her were quiet too, since all the suffragettes were housed together, and she lay still and listened to that silence. It was a companionable silence, and spoke of their shared weakness
– the listlessness of their bodies, the strength and determination of their minds. The silence didn’t last beyond the end of the sixth day. New sounds came to fill it.

The squeal of trolley wheels. Multiple footsteps, moving with purpose. The rattle of keys, of metal equipment of some kind. Cat raised her head from her rancid mattress at the unfamiliar noises. She thought about getting up, and pressing her face sideways to the tiny grille in the door, to see if she could see what was coming. Needles of unease pricked at her skin, and she couldn’t say why. Then more sounds started, and she knew her instincts were right. Shrieks, scuffles. The thump of furniture, knocked against the wall, the clank of metal again, the wardresses swearing, and male voices too. Two of them, muttering in low tones, as though through gritted teeth. The shrieks became screams, rose higher in panic, and then were stifled, choked off; replaced by coughing, retching. Hideous animal sounds like none Cat had ever heard a person make before. And when the source of the noises exited that cell, they left silence behind within it. A terrible, stunned, weighty silence. As the trolley wheels came towards her door, Cat’s heart pounded hard enough to break through her ribs.

She was next. Three wardresses, their hair in disarray, scratches on their arms and cheeks. Their faces grim as death. The Crow was one of them. The two men she had heard were wearing white coats like doctors, splattered and smeared with some substance. Beige smears, with flecks of red. The five of them brought with them a stink of sweat and fear. Slowly, Cat sat up. Her head spun wildly, a shock of dizziness that made it hard to think, hard to act. ‘Now, you give us any trouble and you’ll only make it harder on yourself. You hear?’ The Crow told her. The woman who, several days ago, had smiled as she split Cat’s lip with a sharp, back-handed slap. ‘Get away from me,’ Cat said. She tried to stand, but her legs felt boneless. She grasped the mattress for support, tried to push herself up once more. ‘It’s for your own good, young lady,’ one of the men said. ‘Let’s keep her on the bed, then,’ a wardress said. Cat shouted
out, shouted:
‘No!
’ But they were on her in an instant, two of the women holding her down by her arms, one of the men coming to hold her head. She bucked her body as hard as she could – which was not very hard – tried to twist out of their grasp. Her joints popped, skin bruised where they held her. The second man filled a tin cup from the trolley and passed it to The Crow. She put her knee on Cat’s chest, and the man lifted her head up, and the cup was pushed into her mouth. She smelt the sickly, milky smell of gruel and clamped her teeth together as hard as she could, wouldn’t yield. The wardress pushed the cup ever harder, scraping it along Cat’s teeth until the metal rim cut her gums, and she felt blood wetting her lips. But she did not yield. A tiny bit of gruel found its way into her mouth, and as soon as the woman was off her chest she spat it violently at her. Bright red swirls in the milky mess. ‘Christ! You’re a bloody idiot,’ The Crow told her.

Cat panted, gasped for breath. She strained every muscle, cursed them with every foul word she had ever heard coming from the mouth of a street hawker. The man at her head glanced at the man by the trolley. They nodded to one another. Her head was let go momentarily, but then The Crow took over, gripping her skull hard, pressing her thumbs cruelly into the pressure points at Cat’s temples. She screamed. When she opened her eyes, the men were upon her: one held a thin rubber tube, the other attached a funnel to the far end of it. Cat didn’t understand. She squeezed her teeth together again, thought that in this way she would beat them. But the tube was pushed into her nose. Into one nostril, uncomfortable at first, alien, and then excruciating. Like a knife stabbing behind her eye. She screamed, her mouth wide open at last, surrendering, but they stuck to their course. The tube was pushed in ever deeper. She felt it at the back of her throat and she gagged, her mouth filling with acid. She couldn’t breathe, her eyes bulged with panic as she choked, coughed, gasped little snatches of precious air. ‘That’s it. Ready,’ the man manoeuvring the tube announced curtly. His colleague poured the gruel into the funnel. For five minutes, which
felt like a lifetime to Cat, he poured, watched the stuff trickle down the tube, poured again. When the tube came out at last it left a sticky wet dribble of milky slime in her throat, which trickled into her lungs. Her nose bled profusely as the tube slithered out, and her mouth tasted of blood and bile. They left her on her side, filthy and coughing. Deep, ragged coughs to clear the muck from her lungs. The pain in her head and chest was astonishing. She coughed for hours. She coughed for weeks and weeks. ‘Same again at teatime then, petal?’ The Crow said, sweetly. ‘That’s enough,’ one of the men snapped sternly. ‘There’s an anti-emetic in the mixture, but check on her in half an hour. If she has vomited at all, let me know and we will repeat the procedure.’ Cat lay in misery, in outrage and pain; every bit as violated as if she’d been raped.
Same again at teatime
.

‘Cat?’ There’s a gentle knock at the door, rousing her from the waking nightmares that beset her. ‘Cat, are you awake?’ It’s Hester’s voice, soft and quiet. Cat blinks, looks around her, finds it is still dark. She has no idea what the hour might be.

‘Yes, madam,’ she says, and then clears her throat. It feels raw and rough, as though the men with their tube really have been back to see her.

‘May I come in?’ Hester asks, and Cat has no idea how to answer her. Then there’s a rattling, a joyful little grating sound, and the door is open. Cat’s legs have gone to sleep. She struggles to her knees, turns her body, grips the edge of the door and feels the push of air through the gap. Light blooms behind her closed eyelids. She can’t tell if it’s Hester Canning’s little candle lamp, or relief, joy, liberation. ‘Oh, Cat! Your poor hands!’ Hester says, setting the candle on the dresser and helping Cat to stand. The skin across her knuckles is tattered and bloody.

‘Please. Please don’t lock me in again,’ Cat says. She’s not sure how many nights it has been, since the first time. Perhaps only two or three; perhaps more.

Hester’s eyes are full of pity. ‘Nobody even knows I’ve got this key. It opens every door in the house,’ she says, holding it loosely in her palm. ‘Come – come and sit on the bed. I’ll wash your hands for you. Oh, you have so many splinters!’

‘I can do it, madam. There’s no need,’ Cat says, flatly. She won’t let Hester make amends for this. Won’t let her forgive herself. There’s an awkward silence. Hester wraps her dressing gown more tightly around her, tucks the ends of the belt away neatly, nervously.

‘Was it so very awful? In gaol, I mean?’ Hester asks. Cat stares at her, wonders how to explain.

‘It was,’ is all she says in the end, the words little more than a croak.

‘Cat, I have always wondered … what was your crime? Why did they imprison you?’ Hester asks. As if here, in the dark, here in her servant’s room, she is no longer in her real world. She can ask things she would never normally ask, because the rules are not the same. Cat smiles a bleak little smile.

‘Everybody wants to know,’ she says. ‘Two months I was locked away, and my friend Tess and others with me. And for what? Obstruction.’

‘Obstruction?’

‘That was the charge. We had intent to cause a breach of the peace as well, they said. I had half a brick in my pocket, but that was for later. I hadn’t thrown anything at the time of my arrest, but they found it in my pocket, and they knew what it was for. And I would have done it.’ She tips her chin up defiantly. ‘Through the window of the milliner’s shop on West Street, that was my intention. It had the most lovely, huge plate-glass window; all the fine feathery hats inside on fake ladies’ heads. Hats the likes of Tess and I would never have cause to wear. I wanted to smash it. I would have done it!’

‘Hush, Cat! We mustn’t be heard,’ Hester whispers. ‘But you didn’t throw it?’

‘I didn’t get the chance. Six o’clock, that was meant to be when we would all split up, go to our various target areas and wait. When Big Ben struck the half hour, we would attack. But first, in the afternoon, we went to a Liberal Party meeting. We had placards to hold, and we were to shout slogans as loudly as we could, so that everybody who’d gone to hear the speakers inside would hear us too, since we weren’t allowed in to ask our questions, or make our demands. There were twelve of us, all the active duty girls from our branch of the WSPU. And Tess. Tess, my friend. She didn’t want to be on active duty, but I made her. I
made
her.’ Cat pauses, takes a long, shuddering breath and shuts her eyes. It’s unbearable to think of it. ‘We had strict instructions. There’s no law against doing what we were doing, as long as you stay in the street. If you step onto the pavement, they can call it obstruction, and cart you away. Standing in the street to shout a slogan is no crime. Standing on an empty pavement not a yard away to shout a slogan
is
a crime. How fair and reasonable the law is! So the policemen who turned up, they began to herd us. I didn’t realise at first what was happening. The officers linked arms and moved towards us, just ever so slowly. A half a step at a time for twenty minutes or more. Until we had no choice but to fall under their feet, climb onto each other’s shoulders or step up onto the pavement. So we did the latter, and we were arrested. Each last one of us.’

‘You were gaoled for months for
that?
’ Hester says, incredulously.