Women of Courage Read online

  Mrs Watson shrugged. ‘Probably most of them are orphans, or the children of criminals. Maybe some of the parents even profit by it. We think the little girls are taken from house to house, to meet the needs of men who are attracted to that sort of thing. I agree it is . . . not pleasant.’

  Not pleasant. It most certainly was not, especially when you had just received an anonymous letter suggesting your own husband was connected with a scandal like this. And Mrs Watson’s story seemed to parallel the letter so closely. But there was one vital detail missing from what Mrs Watson seemed to know. And that, Sarah thought grimly, is perhaps what I have received in a letter. Only it names my husband as an accessory to this crime.

  She felt sick. Perhaps Christabel Pankhurst was right, all men are diseased in their minds. Could Jonathan really . . .?

  ‘Are you all right, Mrs Beckett?’

  ‘What?’ She must have swayed, looked pale for a moment. If I go feeble now she’ll start nursing me again and I don’t want that. I’m tired of that, Sarah thought. She sat up straight on the sofa and smiled brightly. Whatever happens, whatever Jonathan has done, this woman must never know. No one must know, it is too foul, too shameful! Anyway, it may not be true. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I’m fine. But we’ve talked too much. Let us finish our correspondence, shall we?’

  Now, alone in the police cell, her hand pressed against the cold grimy stone of the wall, she thought: that was the hardest moment of all, to get up and go back to ordinary letters and work through them as though nothing had happened, with the foul secret eating away inside me like a tapeworm all that time, and say nothing at all . . .

  When Mrs Watson left, Sarah went into Jonathan’s study and there they were, quite openly marked in his diary. Appointments with Dr Martin Armstrong. About once a week, regularly, sometimes more. For nearly a year now, usually on Tuesday or Saturday evenings. If it was for his stomach it clearly had not done much good — she had never thought of this before. She leafed her way back through the pages, appalled. Dr Armstrong’s address was, 40, Roland Gardens, Kensington.

  And Jonathan had an appointment for tomorrow afternoon . . .

  As the night wore on, the drunk in the cell down the corridor stopped singing and only made the occasional loud, querulous complaint which ended with a kick against his door. More women had been brought in — prostitutes possibly, Sarah thought, for they cursed the constables with a cheerful, raucous obscenity, and mocked them noisily from within their cells. Sarah didn’t know a lot about prostitutes and she didn’t want to. No doubt they were exploited by men, but it was the class of women she found it hardest to feel sympathy for. Especially when they were assertive, and proud of what they were.

  First her father, and now Jonathan . . . She didn’t want to remember but now, in the lonely middle of the night, there was nothing else to think about. She had to. She thought back to the events of last night. After her conversation the day before with Mrs Watson . . .

  She had only been out of the house a couple of times since her release from prison, and it had been difficult to arrange. She had had to face down Reeves, their butler, who was justifiably anxious for her health, and afraid that she might be re-arrested. She put on her oldest dark coat and a faded, flowery hat, took an old parasol, and slipped out of the side door where the deliveries were made. She had noticed no policemen in the Square, and when she had walked a couple of hundred yards she had hailed a motor taxi for Kensington.

  She had found Roland Gardens without difficulty. It was an impressive street of tall, four-storey buildings, some still inhabited by wealthy families, others converted into expensive flats. Nannies pushed prams down it and ladies of Sarah’s own class strolled on their way back from the park, talking idly. Nothing in the least unpleasant or disreputable or frightening anywhere.

  Doctor Armstrong’s brass plate was on a doorway about halfway down. When she had found it she walked quickly across the road, wondering where on earth she could position herself to watch the entrance. It was difficult, there were no restaurants or shops, nowhere obvious at all. Her only solution was to walk slowly to the end of the street and then, equally slowly, back up the other side. If I do this too often, she thought, people will start to ask questions.

  The hansom cab arrived when she had just begun to turn to go back. A man got out, paid the cabbie, and walked briskly inside.

  Jonathan!

  She knew it was him even from a distance of a hundred yards. She would have known him anywhere — that brisk, lithe figure, the short beard, the casual tilt of the top hat. A gentleman calling for an appointment with his doctor. Nothing unusual about that, nothing suspicious. What could she do now?

  Sarah walked slowly back down the street, thinking. She was not entirely clear why she had come. She had established that he did indeed come to see Martin Armstrong, but that was no secret — it was in his diary, openly admitted. What she really needed to know was what went on inside the house, and that she had no way of knowing. What had the letter said? Treatment — he gets the same treatment as other men? Something like that. But what did that mean? After all, one went to a doctor for treatment. Surely nothing indecent could happen in a proper consulting room, when Jonathan was there with Martin Armstrong?

  What she needed to know was what was being said inside that house. What should she do? Walk up the steps and ring the bell?

  And then go inside and say: ‘Hello, Jonathan, I was just passing and I dropped in to see how your stomach is being treated.’

  The idea was absurd. So was the setting. The street was far too quiet, too respectable, too prosperous. She walked up and down it again, flushed with embarrassment, keeping her parasol between her face and the windows of number 40. She began to think of going home.

  Then, as she turned down the street for the fourth time, a man approached her.

  He was a short, rather stout man, in a business suit and bowler hat. She had seen him leaning against a wall reading a newspaper last time she had come down the street. This time, as she walked past, he fell into step beside her.

  ‘Nice evening for it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ She glanced at him, surprised, distracted. Just before he had spoken she had seen the door of number 40 begin to open. No one had come out yet but . . .

  ‘I said it’s a nice evening, dear,’ the man said. She glanced at him and saw he was smiling in a way she didn’t like. ‘Got a place near here, have you?’ He offered her his arm.

  What on earth did he mean? Despite herself, the polite gesture of a man offering a lady his arm was so compelling that she moved her own hand automatically towards his elbow, before she realised what she was doing and stepped hurriedly away.

  ‘I think you’re mistaken. I don’t think we’ve met.’

  The man stared at her, puzzled, his arm still raised and the unsettling smile still on his lips. They were rather thick lips, she noticed, and there was a boil on his neck.

  ‘No, we haven’t met yet, petal, but I want to know all about you. How much do you charge?’

  Oh God. Understanding rose like bile in her throat. He thinks I’m walking up and down this street to solicit custom. She wondered whether to hit him with her parasol and then thought no, that will attract attention. And there is a man coming out of the doctor’s surgery . . .

  ‘Get away from me! You’ve made a mistake. I’m not one of those women. Leave me alone!’

  The words sounded completely stupid, foolish, but what could one say? No one had ever approached her in that way before. She walked quickly away down the street and thank God, thank God the man did not follow. She could not walk very fast because she was still not fit, but no footsteps followed. As she went on down the street she came closer to number 40 and she saw the man who had come out cross the road in front of her. He reached the pavement on the other side and walked briskly back up the way she had come.

  A well-dressed, burly man in morning coat and top hat, with thick eyebrows and moustache, heavy
jowls, and a hearty confident stride. She had not seen him for nearly a year but she recognized him — it was Martin Armstrong.

  She shielded herself from view with her parasol and walked to the end of the street. Her face was flushed and she was breathing deeply as though she had run a mile. As she stopped and looked back her legs trembled.

  Now what? The man with the newspaper was still there. He stared back up the street at her, then snapped his paper shut and strode angrily away, out of sight round the corner. Dr Armstrong was getting into a cab.

  I can’t stay here, Sarah thought, I can’t face that again. This is all a mistake, I’ll just wait until Jonathan comes out and then I’ll go home. I’ll think about what to say to him later.

  After all, what can I say? I received this letter and then I followed you to your doctor and saw you go in and then waited until you came out, and a man accosted me in the street. What sort of an accusation was that?

  This is all nonsense. It’s just a bad dream.

  The flush faded from her face and her breathing returned to normal. Martin Armstrong’s cab had long gone, and the street looked peaceful and empty. A nanny was pushing a pram down one side, and a little boy was riding a tricycle on the pavement in front of her. The gas lights were coming on in some of the windows.

  Why hasn’t Jonathan come out?

  When you go to the doctor’s it’s never the doctor who leaves first, it’s the patient. Martin Armstrong came out five minutes ago, and Jonathan’s still in there.

  Perhaps it’s a partnership and he’s seeing another doctor. So why did it say Armstrong in his diary?

  Grimly, she walked down the street for a fifth time, keeping her eyes open for the man with the newspaper. She had to see, she had to be sure. When she came to number 40, the brass plate was quite clear, as she had known it would be. Dr Martin Armstrong, M.D. Private consultations. No partner, no one else.

  She stared at the front door, willing it to open, willing her husband to come down the steps towards her, to smile and put his arms round her and tell her it was all right. She thought if he did she might put her arms round him and kiss him on the lips. As she had not done for months.

  Or slap his face right there in the street. She didn’t know which.

  Either way, she didn’t have to choose. Nothing happened.

  There was a light on in the hall but no lights on in the downstairs rooms, which were surely the consulting rooms. There were net curtains in the rooms up above, and window boxes and gaslight, but they were too high to see in. Most of the rooms had gaslight showing and somewhere she thought she could hear the sound of a piano.

  She thought, this is a four-storey building, but there are no other names on the door, no other bells to ring. What does one doctor do with four floors?

  She heard a car drawing up behind her and turned to see a black taxicab. She walked slowly away along the pavement and then stopped as though she were about to cross the road. The taxi drew up outside number 40 and a man got out. A well-dressed man with smart grey suit, top hat and a loud, cheerful voice. He paid the driver and then turned to hand out a young woman. As she stepped out he said something to her and she laughed.

  There was something about the laugh that grated horribly on Sarah. It was high, falsetto, slightly tipsy. As though the girl was slightly drunk and determined to seem more so, to get the maximum amusement out of the man’s joke and at the same time to seem silly, flighty, without a thought in her head but what he put there. As she came out of the cab she staggered and leant against him. He put his arm round her and led her up the steps.

  The man did not need to ring the bell at Dr Armstrong’s consulting rooms. The girl, tipsy as she was, produced a key.

  When they had gone it began to get dark. Sarah crossed the road and looked back at the house. The curtains were drawn now but there were gas lights in every room except those on the ground floor. Although from this distance she could hear no sound, not even the piano, in the gathering dusk the house had an indefinable air of gaiety.

  Sarah waited half an hour until the lamplighter came along the street with his long pole. By that time several men had passed, coming home to their respectable family houses and flats, and two had looked at her hesitantly, as though tempted to say something, before moving on. One other man, a distinguished man in top hat and grey overcoat, had rung the doorbell of number 40 and been let in, but Jonathan had not come out.

  Sarah walked home, feeling lonelier and angrier and more humiliated than she had ever felt since her father died . . .

  She lay on her back on the hard wooden bed and stared up at the ceiling, where a glimmer of light from the street outside made shadows flicker in the gloom. The prostitutes and the drunk in the cells down the corridor were quiet now, and the shouts and laughter in the street outside were few and far between. Her body ached with the cold and she felt alone in all the world.

  It’s true then, she thought, the whole rotten system that men have set up oppresses women and destroys love. We have to get the vote, because that’s the only way we shall ever change these horrors. Though just now she couldn’t quite see how.

  I slashed the picture, anyway, she told herself bleakly. That may do something for the movement but it won’t help me. Because the woman in the picture wasn’t just a whore as I said she was — she was me, myself, the woman Jonathan thought he had married. The woman I once thought I was. If I had stayed like that he would never have betrayed me.

  She had not slept with Jonathan for over a year. It had been her own decision, part of her reaction to the trauma of her miscarriages, to her own political development. A grown man ought to be able to cope with that. If men behave like beasts they don’t deserve our love.

  The words rang hollow, even to herself. All that sleepless night she tried to warm herself with hatred of him but the flame refused to burn.

  If he went to a whore she had only herself to blame . . .

  4

  THE COURTROOM was crowded, but there were no women there at all. Sarah came into the dock up the stairs which led directly from the police cells, and she could hear the murmur of voices as she climbed the steps. The murmur changed to an indrawn hush, and then there she was. One moment in the cold, echoing, whitewashed underworld of the cells, the next in a warm, oak-panelled magistrates’ court, warmed by the breath and bodies of fifty or sixty men crammed together around her on wooden benches.

  She stood in the centre of it all, raised above them in the dock, with only the magistrates and their clerk at her own eye level.

  Her hands shook as she grasped the metal rail on the front edge of the dock. She wondered what she looked like to all these men. A slim, tall woman with a pale face, dark, deep set eyes, and untidy brown curly hair, she supposed. Not very clean or attractive. She had washed and dressed as well as she could — one of the wardresses had given her a bowl of soap and water and a comb, and had helped her to straighten out her hat which had fallen off and been bent in the National Gallery. But the woman had not produced a needle and thread, and Sarah was conscious of several rips in her grey skirt and jacket. The men could not fail to see those.

  Her hands shook, too, because she was already feeling weak after twenty-four hours without sleep or food.

  They had brought her food last night, but she had sent it back untasted. She had resisted again today, though the smell of breakfast had been a much greater temptation than she had expected.

  I am like an animal, here to be baited, she thought. I am their victim. They could tear me apart if it entertained them. But then, that is what all men are like, in the end.

  She saw Jonathan, sitting down below on the benches to the left. Immaculate as ever in morning coat and top hat — tall, bearded, handsome. But the high wing collar only partially covered the medical dressing on one cheek, and the face which looked up at her was tired, drawn and pale like her own. She wondered if he had slept since he saw her, and if he was afraid of what she might say in court this morning.
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  They gazed at each other bleakly. When he tried to smile she frowned and he turned away, embarrassed, conscious of the long row of journalists eagerly watching from the side benches, ready to scribble in their notebooks.

  She had prepared a speech, but everything seemed to go so smoothly she thought she would have no chance to give it. Jonathan had produced a lawyer for her earlier this morning, but she had sent the man away. He had suggested she plead insanity, for heaven’s sake! Now, when they put the charge to her, she raised her head and proudly said: ‘Guilty’ in a clear voice which sent a buzz of comment through the court.

  She had thought that would hurry things along, but it seemed that a great deal of time had to be given to the prosecution lawyer to ramble on stating perfectly obvious facts, such as the time of day she had entered the National Gallery and even the knife she had used — he held it up. When he called the manager of the Gallery into the witness box to explain the value of the painting, Sarah lost patience.

  In a loud, clear voice, she said: ‘I do not recognise the jurisdiction of this court.’

  All the heads of the men, who had been concentrating on the oath the manager was about to take, turned her way. the manager’s mouth was actually open in surprise. The clerk of the court scowled.

  ‘Please be quiet, madam. You will be given your chance to speak in due course.’

  ‘But I don’t want to be given a chance to speak, I want to speak now! I have been here many times before and listened to you — now it is my turn. Freedom of speech is not a thing for men to grant to women — we have it of right. And I say here and now that I do not recognise this court, because it is a court composed only of men, granted its powers by a parliament composed only of men, which in its turn was elected by male voters only. Whereas half of the citizens of this country are women . . .’

  ‘Madam! You will be silent!’ The clerk banged furiously with his wooden gavel, and the policeman in the dock moved to Sarah’s side and held her by the arm. But he hasn’t got my mouth, Sarah thought, that still works.