Octavia (13 page)

The debate about violent protest had been fanned into a rage by the forcible feeding of the hunger strikers. In October the now renowned Laura Ainsworth took the prison authorities to the High Court and although she lost her case, it was rumoured that there was going to be an enquiry into the whole business of force-feeding. In November, a group of militants broke into the lord mayor’s banquet and threw stones at the assembled worthies.

‘It is the wrong tactic,’ Octavia said, over and over again at one meeting after another. ‘We lose public sympathy every time we are violent and we need public sympathy if we are to prevail. I know the authorities are being extremely violent to us, but we should show our supporters a better way than throwing stones and hurling insults. We must go on pressing for proper democratic change, and that must come eventually through a bill in Parliament. We cannot bully our enemies into giving us what we want.’

Many agreed with her, but they all knew that something would have to be done to persuade the men who made the law and drafted the bills and none of them could think what it could possibly be. Mr Keir Hardy, MP, was the staunchest of
allies but there were times when he seemed to be the only one. ‘He’s a voice in the wilderness,’ they said sadly.

If it hadn’t been for her infrequent visits to Paris, that winter would have been a very difficult time. She spent four days there at the end of November, when mist rose from the surface of the Seine and the city was dank with rain. And she was there for nearly a week in the middle of December, when the streets were brilliantly lit, the shops were crammed with Christmas treats and the pavements crowded with elegant shoppers, the women snuggled into fur-trimmed coats and hats like Russian Cossacks, the men in well-cut overcoats and leather gloves, escorting them in and out of shops and hotels, gallantly attentive. She was glad to be in their company. ‘They look so cultivated,’ she said to Tommy.

‘Like us!’ he said, putting his arm round her as they walked along. ‘You, my lovely Tikki Tavy, are the most cultivated woman in the city.’

His lightness of tone sustained her. When she was with him, she could joke and flirt, as if the world were an easy, comfortable place, and no one had ever thrown stones or smashed windows or been spat at or force-fed. It was only in London that she had to be serious all the time. And as the months went by there was more and more to be serious about.

The New Year brought a piece of rather alarming news. It was tucked away in the middle pages of the newspaper and she wouldn’t have seen it at all if she hadn’t been scanning the pages for a report on the latest WSPU meeting.

‘Britain could face a serious shortage of horses should war break out, it was reported yesterday. The National Horse Supply Association was told that 170,000 would be needed immediately on the outbreak of hostilities, the same number
being replaced every six months. Germany and Austria spent £200,000 each annually on horse breeding, Britain less than £5,000.’

‘Have you read this, Pa?’ she said, passing the paper across the breakfast table.

He glanced at it and said he had. ‘There was something similar in
The Times
yesterday.’

‘It sounds as if they are expecting a war,’ she said. ‘That’s not right surely.’

‘We live in an age of empire, little one,’ he said, ‘and empires are belligerent by their very nature. They are won by armed force, don’t forget, and maintained by occupying armies.’

‘But there’s no reason for us to want to fight anyone now,’ she persisted. ‘Surely to goodness. We’re the biggest empire in the world.’

‘All the more reason,’ he told her. ‘The biggest empire has the most to lose.’

It was a sobering thought. I shall write to Tommy, she decided and see what he has to say about it.

It upset her that he seemed to agree with her father.
‘I daresay we shall put up a fight sooner or later,’
he wrote.
‘Not to worry your head about it. If it comes, it comes. I shan’t be in Paris until May but then I’ve got a whole fortnight’s leave. Good or what? I’ll take you to Versailles and show you the Sun King’s palace.’

Which he did and very charming she found it. ‘The French are so civilised,’ she said. ‘They’re not talking about a war coming.’

‘Everybody’s talking about a war coming,’ Tommy told her lightly. ‘You should hear them in the embassy. It’s all they ever
do
talk about. That and the warring tribes. I can’t tell you how boring it is. Don’t let’s waste
our
time on it.’

Fortunately the newspapers gave them something else to talk about the very next day. King Edward VII was dead. ‘Well, how about that!’ Tommy said. ‘I hope they let us home for the funeral. I shall put on a black tie and look sorrowful and ask them. It’s about time we got back to our flat, don’t you think?’

The black tie and sorrowful expression paid off. This time it was a month’s leave and he came straight back to London to enjoy it. ‘The king can die any time he wants,’ he said to Octavia on their first afternoon in the flat. ‘It suits me to a T.’

‘I’m sure he did it to suit you,’ she teased. ‘All the papers keep saying what a diplomat he was.’

‘Come to bed,’ he said.

It was a summer of good meals, family picnics on the river with Cyril and Em and the three children, frequent and cheerful visits to the theatre, occasional sorties out into the country on their bicycles, and all of it spiced with the most passionate and satisfying lovemaking. By this time Em was speaking quite openly about them ‘walking out’ but Octavia didn’t mind. She explained to her cousin, privately of course, that she and Tommy had got to be patient because they couldn’t marry until he’d finished his apprenticeship and naturally Em passed on all her news to her mother, who naturally passed it on in her turn to her sister Amy.

‘I knew there was something in the wind,’ Amy said to J-J. ‘All those letters he keeps writing. And now he’s home there’s never a day goes by when they’re not together. He’ll be speaking to you soon, J-J, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Her husband made a grimace and returned to his newspaper.

‘Maybe I’ll say something to Tavy,’ Amy said. ‘When she comes in tonight.’

But when Octavia came in that night she was bursting with such good news she couldn’t wait to tell them what it was. ‘They’ve formed a conciliation committee, Mama,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘Who have?’ Amy asked. ‘What for?’

‘Why, the MPs,’ her daughter said. ‘They’re going to draft a women’s suffrage bill and Keir Hardy’s going to steer it through the Commons. It’s going to be called the Conciliation Bill. We’re going to get the vote at last!’

‘I couldn’t get a word in edgeways,’ Amy said to J-J as they were preparing for bed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so excited.’

The excitement was short-lived. Despite Keir Hardy’s most passionate efforts the bill was defeated. And so was the second a year later, and the third, when Em was expecting her fourth baby, a year after that. The movement was more demoralised than it had ever been and Octavia more angry. It was no surprise to her when a group of furious women stormed into Oxford Street on a mad March day with hammers hidden in their muffs and smashed as many
plate-glass
windows as they could before they were arrested.
‘I know so exactly how they feel,’
she wrote to Tommy.
‘I never thought I’d say this but I could do it myself.’

But of course the result of their actions was a police raid on the headquarters of the WSPU and the arrest of Emily Pankhurst and the Pethick Lawrences. They were tried for conspiracy and sentenced to nine months.

‘Sometimes I think the whole world has gone mad,’
Octavia
wrote,
‘for such people to be sent to prison as if they were common criminals is tantamount to lunacy. To say nothing of the way the government is treating the miners and the dockers. They are making it a crime to ask for a living wage. Is it any wonder there are riots?’

The one bright moment in that crazy spring was the arrival of Em’s fourth baby. It was another little boy, born on March 20
^th
and as pale and fragile as his brother Eddie. She called him Richard and even though she was wearied by his birth was instantly enamoured of him. ‘Dear little man!’

As there was no hope of seeing Tommy again until the summer, Octavia spent a lot of time with Emmeline and her brood during the next three months. Dora was now a pretty little girl who had her fifth birthday four days after her new brother’s arrival and was given a special party by her mother because she’d been so good. Eddie was still pale and undersized for a child who was nearly four and had a decidedly nervous air but he loved his Aunty Tavy and crept happily into her lap for stories whenever she appeared. And as to baby Edith, she was so plump and cheerful it was a joy to see her.

‘Four babies,’ Octavia said to her cousin, who was sitting on her sofa with the new baby across her knees and Edith cuddled against her side. ‘You’re like the old woman in the shoe, Em.’

‘Who had so many children she didn’t know what to do,’ Emmeline laughed. ‘I feel like her sometimes, especially when they’re all crying. But I love them so much I wouldn’t be without them.’

‘They were your dream,’ Octavia said.

‘And the cause was yours?’ Emmeline said. ‘How oddly
dreams turn out, don’t they? They seem so easy and straightforward when you’re young but when they come true everything’s so complicated it’s a different matter altogether.’

‘Mine is a bit of a nightmare sometimes,’ Octavia admitted. They were talking so openly to one another that a confession was possible. ‘We’ve been campaigning for such a long time and we’re no nearer to getting the vote than we were at the beginning.’

‘Don’t you ever want to give up?’ Emmeline asked, stroking the baby’s downy head. ‘Leave it all behind you and marry Tommy.’

‘No,’ Octavia said. She was quite certain about it, bad though things were. ‘We must go on now. There’s nothing else we can do.’

‘Even if it means being sent to prison and force-fed?’

Octavia’s heart contracted at the thought but her answer was steadfast. ‘Even if it means that.’

‘You’re very brave,’ Emmeline said. ‘I don’t think I could stand it. It must be terribly painful.’

‘You’ve had four babies,’ Octavia said. ‘Now that’s what I’d call brave. And painful.’

‘Having babies is natural,’ Emmeline said sagely. ‘It
is
painful – very painful, I’ll grant you that – but when it’s over you soon forget it and you’ve got a baby to show for it. Being force-fed isn’t natural by any stretch of the imagination. That’s the difference. I couldn’t stand somebody doing that to me.’

And I will have to, Octavia thought. I can’t go on avoiding action forever.

The moment Octavia had been dreading arrived so unobtrusively that it had begun, and the whole terrifying chain of events had been set in motion, before she was aware of it.

It was a blustery morning in March, not long after baby Dickie’s first birthday and she and Betty had gone up to London to help at the national headquarters, as they often did when there were committee meetings there and one or the other of them had been delegated to attend. They’d been the first to arrive that morning and had settled down to work at once while they waited for the others. Betty had gone straight into the inner office to do some filing while Octavia stayed in the outer office and started to open the mail. She was slitting open the second letter when an odd fluttering movement caught her attention and, turning her head, she saw that there was a sparrow frantically trying to get out of the upper window, throwing itself at the unyielding glass over and over again, its wings in perpetually baffled motion.

It must have been shut in all night, poor thing, she thought,
and she took her chair over to the window to climb up and let it out. It was in such a panic she was afraid it would do itself a mischief before she could release it, so she pulled her clean handkerchief out of her pocket, shook it out, and after a brief struggle managed to catch hold of the bird and soothe it until it was still. She could feel its heart beating wildly through the white cloth. ‘Hush! Hush!’ she said, speaking to it as if it was a baby. ‘You’ll be free soon. I’ve got you.’ It wasn’t easy to hold a bird with one hand and open a window with the other and she was still struggling to lift the sash when she heard footsteps and voices coming up the stairs towards her.

‘There’s one of them!’ a man’s voice called. ‘Look there, sir!’

And another said. ‘You girl! Get down! Get down at once!’

Alarmed by the noise, the sparrow tried to struggle out of her handkerchief. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, aiming her words at the speaker but not taking her eyes from the bird. She was irritated to be called a girl, which she most certainly was not. ‘I shan’t fall. I’ll get down when I’ve got the window open and let this…’

‘She’s throwing something out the window,’ the voice said. ‘Grab her legs!’

Then everything happened at once and in an odd disconnected way as if time had been fractured. The window gave and she pushed it up at last and eased the bird out into the air giving her handkerchief a shake to set it free; someone seized her legs – how dare they! – she was being pulled backwards off the chair and kicked out instinctively to disentangle herself from his objectionable hands and stop herself from falling. She was aware that there were other women in the room, and that one of them was asking, ‘Do
you have a warrant for this intrusion, Officer?’ And she looked down and found she was staring into the reddened face of a policeman. He was rubbing his ribs so her kick had obviously landed. Good!

‘You’re under arrest,’ he said.

She was appalled. ‘What on earth for?’

‘Obsructing a police officer in the execution of his duty. Go an’ see what she threw out the winder, Fred. It could be evidence.’

The idiocy of the man! ‘Try not to be more of a fool then you look,’ she said. It was probably risky to speak to him like that but really, he
was
asking for it. ‘It was a sparrow. That’s all. A bird. I was…’

He didn’t believe her. She could see that from the mocking expression on his face. ‘You wanna watch your lip, young lady,’ he said, and his tone was threatening. ‘You got a lot too much to say for yourself, you ask me. Won’t do you no good, all this argy-bargy.’

The words were as insulting as his expression. She had to fight back the urge to hit him again. But she could see Betty standing in the doorway, slightly out of focus, shaking her head and miming that she shouldn’t say any more, and she hesitated long enough to notice what was going on around her and to feel angry at that instead. One of the policemen was scooping all the letters off the table into a sack and another was collecting all the leaflets. Dear God! she thought, we’re being raided. I
have
been arrested. But really it was too absurd.

The second constable tossed the last of the leaflets in the sack and stepped up to take her by the arm. She still felt bemused and aggrieved at what was going on but she
followed him almost obediently. It was pointless to make a fuss at that stage. It would all be resolved when they got to court and the magistrate heard what she’d actually been doing. She might even get an apology.

She got six weeks, for resisting arrest and attacking a police officer. It was totally, hideously unfair. The objectionable policeman made a great to-do about his ‘bruised ribs’ and the magistrate didn’t believe a word she said. Afterwards, sitting in the Black Maria as she was driven away to Holloway Gaol, she tried to make sense of what had happened, but it was as if her mind had been switched off, like one of the new electric lights, as if she’d been suddenly plunged into darkness. There was a terrible inevitability about what had happened, almost a pattern, linking the frightened bird beating its wings against that high window, to the prisoner she had become, crouched in her cell with its own high filthy window and its chokingly remembered smell, beating the wings of her mind, endlessly and uselessly against the injustice of it.

She had been admitted as a category C prisoner, with no rights, no books and no means of writing, told that she would work sewing mailbags, that she was allowed to write and receive one letter a week and warned that they ‘wouldn’t stand no nonsense from her’. Then she was left on her own. Trying to be practical, she decided that her first letter must be to Tommy. She knew she ought to send a message to her parents, because they were bound to be anxious, but he was expecting her in Paris at the end of the month, and would have to be told that their plans had been changed. The trouble was that she had no idea when she going to be allowed to write it and that made her feel bleak and lost. Oh, Tommy, she thought, what a long way away you are. Then since there was
no one there to see her, she put her head in her hands and wept. It was weak of her but she couldn’t help it.

The conflict began that evening when a tray full of unappetising food was pushed through the flap into her cell and she told the warder, very calmly and politely, that she wasn’t going to eat it. ‘I am a political prisoner,’ she said, ‘and should be treated as such.’

The warder wasn’t impressed. ‘You eatin’ it or ain’tcher?’ she said.

Octavia’s hands were shaking but she spoke firmly. ‘When I am reassessed as a category A,’ she said, ‘I will eat my meals. Until then I will not.’ And she repeated her reason. ‘I am a political prisoner and should be treated as such.’

‘You’re a blamed fool,’ the warder said, ‘and you’ll live to regret it. If you won’t eat, you won’t. We give yer four days, that’s all. Then you’ll pay fer it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

They were four increasingly anxious days during which Octavia sewed the mailbags they’d given her as well as she could, which was extremely clumsily because the sackcloth tore her fingers. She wrote a long careful letter to Tommy telling him what had happened and tried not to think about the horror to come. On the third day she felt so hungry she had pains in her stomach and on the fourth the pains were so bad it was all she could do to sit up, let alone sew. The next day they would feed her by force.

This is a fearful place, she thought, as the room darkened and the fourth night began. And so cold. It’s March outside but it feels like January here. There were perpetual frost flowers on the high window and the small square of sky was the sort of dirty grey that usually led to snow. She was shivering even though she’d gone to bed in her clothes and
was lying with her blanket tightly wrapped round her. Up and down the corridor, feet tramped and stamped, keys rattled and the women were banging the walls with their mugs – ting, ting, ting – sending their nightly defiance into the chill air, like a tinny Morse code. ‘We are here! You might have locked us up but we’re still here.’

She slept very little that night and when a grey dawn finally lightened the window she was wide awake and terribly afraid. I don’t want to be here, she thought. I want to get out and walk in the fresh air and breathe to the bottom of my lungs. I want to see Tommy again. Oh, Tommy, Tommy, I do miss you and it’s such a long time since we were together. Weeks and weeks. She pulled the memory of that last time into her mind, aching for comfort, remembering how they strolled along the Boulevard St Michel arm in arm, stopping for coffee and croissants at one of the little cafés, spinning out the time until they could take possession of the room he’d booked for them. Oh, the aroma of that coffee! The sharp rough smell of the French cigarette he was smoking. The sharp rough scent of his skin as he pulled her towards him to kiss her. Oh Tommy, Tommy. But the remembered ache of desire was no proof against her present terror. She was in a place dedicated to punishment and about as far away from the tenderness of love as it was possible to get and she was so afraid that her stomach was shaking. She knew exactly what was going to happen to her and that nothing she could say or do would prevent it, apart from giving in to them and eating, which wasn’t an option. It was a matter of principle. She had to make her stand the same as all the others had done. Being force-fed was almost part of your imprisonment these days. If only she wasn’t so terribly aware of what it would entail.

By midday her fear was so extreme it had swollen her tongue and blocked her ability to think. The long unexplained waiting was making everything worse. She couldn’t speak to them now even if she wanted to. The only thing left was to endure. So that is what she did, all through the afternoon and into the evening, trying to control the shaking and to ignore the pangs of hunger that were knifing her stomach. Supper was pushed through the door at her as usual. She didn’t eat it, as usual. It was taken away. The waiting and the pains went on.

And then, just as she was beginning to hope that they’d forgotten all about her, there was a clatter out on the corridor, the cell was unlocked and within seconds it was full of strange people crowding her view. There were two warders, one she recognised, three men in dark suits, a skivvy in an apron and someone else behind her standing in the shadows. They smelt of sweat and vomit and their faces were hard, their eyes glaring. They hate me, she thought, and her stomach shook again.

‘This is yer last chance,’ the strange warder said. ‘Make yer mind up to it. If you won’t eat we’ll ’ave ter feed you by force.’

‘No good talking to ’er,’ the second warder said. ‘She’s a hard case. Best get on with it.’ And before Octavia could speak or think, they all moved at once, coming at her from all directions. She was pushed into her chair and gripped there as though she was in a vice. Her legs were tied to the legs of the chair with a rough towel, her arms pulled back and bound behind it. She tried to twist her face away from them but they were too strong for her. One grabbed her head from behind, pulling it backwards as though he wanted to break her neck. ‘Keep still!’ he ordered when she struggled again. ‘Keep still or
it’ll be the worse for you.’

Then they were pushing a sheet of rubber under her chin and she could see the instruments of torture being held above her, the long rubber tube that would be pushed down her throat, the clamp that would hold her jaws apart. Oh, dear God, she thought, I can’t bear it.

They paused for breath, looking down at her, their faces full of that dreadful hatred. One bent to look at her mouth. She wondered if he was a doctor. He looked as though he might be, in his fine suit and waistcoat and that clean white shirt. She noticed that he was wearing expensive cufflinks, that his hair was well cut, his nails manicured. A doctor. Surely not. Would a doctor be so cruel?

‘Open your mouth,’ he said.

She shook her head, clenched her teeth, prepared herself to fight.

He repeated his order. ‘Now come along,’ he said, talking down to her as though she were a naughty child. ‘You don’t want your teeth broken, do you?’

She tried to swallow and couldn’t because her mouth was too dry. Will they really break my teeth? she thought. They looked as though they could. Would it be better to open my mouth and just get it over with? Indecision made her lips tremble and seeing the involuntary movement the doctor had his fingers on either side of her jaw at once, pressing and forcing. Her mouth opened even though she struggled with all her might to prevent it and the clamp was wedged in place so tightly and brutally that it made her bleed. She could taste the blood in her mouth and instinctively tried to lick the wound but her tongue was held down and she couldn’t move it. The tube was forced between her lips, past the clamp and down
her struggling tongue. It made her retch, and at that it was withdrawn a little and forced again. This time it was pushed into her throat. The pain of its pressure was excruciating, the smell of rubber filled her nose, she was screaming inside her throat but she couldn’t make a sound, she retched again, heaved to vomit, arched her back, but they were holding her, pushing at her, forcing their hideous tubing down and down. For a second she felt herself sliding away into unconsciousness, then another searing pain pulled her back to awareness. They were pouring something down the tube, something hot and evil smelling. It was in her throat swelling the tube, in her nose, falling hard and hot into her stomach. She was struggling for breath now and mortally afraid. They will kill me, she thought.

They held the tube a little higher, looking down at her, and she managed to pull some air into her lungs. Then they resumed the torture, pouring their abominable liquid into her silent screams. Oh stop! Stop! Or I shall die.

It went on and on without pause or pity. She retched and groaned but they paid no attention to her. When they finally pulled the tube from her throat, she was totally exhausted and in so much pain she didn’t notice as they untied her fetters, gathered their instruments and left. She slid from the chair to the concrete floor and lay there panting and retching, unable to move. Even when she was sick – and she was
so
sick – all she could do was turn her head to one side and wait for the vomiting to subside. She felt as if she was heaving up her heart.