Women of Courage (28 page)

‘A busy week in court?’

‘So-so.’ For a few moments he entertained her with an edited version of a recent, rather amusing case, and then the maid brought in the tea. It was on an elegant wooden tray, with a single red rose in a jar and bone china tea service. Mrs Burgoyne poured, adding a slight dash of whisky from a silver flask beside the milk jug. She sipped, her little finger crooked elegantly.

‘So now, to business. The young lady whom I told you about has arrived, and is waiting to meet you. I will send her down in a moment. In the meantime, perhaps you would like to consult the book for your next appointment. It is fully up to date. Here.’

She put her cup down, and took a thick, leather-bound volume from a shelf behind her. It was one of the few things in this feminine, chintzy room that looked out of place. Like a lawbook, perhaps, or a volume of Parliamentary reports.

‘Have a look through. I’ll be back in a moment.’

She handed him the book and went out. Jonathan put down his teacup and lifted the book on to his knee. His hand was trembling slightly with suppressed excitement. So foolish, he thought. Such wicked fun.

Inside, the book was more like a photograph album. On every page there was the photograph of a young woman. Some of them Jonathan recognised, others he had not seen before. Most wore skimpy, suggestive dresses. One or two wore nothing at all. Besides each photograph was a brief biography, and a description of the things each girl, apparently, liked doing.

All the things were shocking. Some of the things were very shocking indeed. Jonathan thought he might like doing them all.

He leafed his way slowly through the book. One or two of the girls were extremely young, he noticed. At first he had felt qualms of conscience about these, but then one day he had tried one, and found a strange pleasure in it. The child had been young, skittish, afraid, anxious to please — it was not necessary to be cruel, just gentle and firm. It was like breaking in a young horse; there was a pleasure in bending the creature to your will. And, after all, these were girls born to the life, who would profit by it. They could become richer this way than in any other that was open to them, and most of them knew it.

Bernard Shaw had a play on in London this year, called
Pygmalion
. It was about a gentleman — a professor — who picks up a girl from the streets, and takes her to his house to teach her the King’s English, so that she can enter high society. Jonathan had gone to see it, and laughed all the way through with the rest of the audience. But all the time he had been thinking: of course there are plenty of girls from poor backgrounds who rise in society this way. But it is not by exercising their
vocal
organs that they do it.

Mrs Burgoyne came back in, and Jonathan gave her the book, open at the photograph of a young woman of about eighteen. She had dark curly hair, a mouth with soft pouting lips, and a very generous bosom indeed.

Mrs Burgoyne glanced at the book and put it back on the bookshelf behind her.

‘Certainly, Mr Becket,’ she said. ‘Next Friday, at six-thirty, as usual?’

Jonathan nodded.

Mrs Burgoyne smiled. ‘I’ll note it down, then,’ she said. ‘Now I must leave you to finish your tea in peace.’

Again she left the room, tugging the long red bellrope as she went. For a moment Jonathan sat there, feeling the blood course through him. He did not feel guilty. He had got into the trick of leaving thoughts like that behind him like an umbrella at the door. In this place he was a different man.

A maid came in to collect the tea tray. It was a different maid, but, like the last one, she wore a frilly mob cap and a starched white pinafore. The pinafore looped over her neck and was tied with ribbons behind her waist.

But under the pinafore, Jonathan noticed as she smiled at him, she had no other clothes on at all . . .

‘I have seen her, Jonathan, yes.’

Martin Armstrong sat back behind his desk in his thick, leather swivel armchair. He hoped he did not look as nervous as he felt. He thought he had found a way of dealing with the danger Sarah Becket presented. He did not like it, but it was better than the alternative. Prison, exposure, disgrace.

Jonathan isn’t going to like this either, Martin thought. But then he isn’t going to find out all the details straight away. I shall have to lie to him. When he finds out about that, our relationship will be over for good.

But then it’s his own fault. If the bloody man could control his own wife none of this would have happened at all!

As he leaned back in the chair the expensive leather creaked, and Martin’s thick, capable hands were clasped comfortably over his ample stomach and watch chain. The look on his face was benign, mellow, comforting. Like a doctor about to reassure a difficult, anxious patient.

‘You have seen her? Good! And?’ Jonathan was impatient for him to go on.

‘And I am pleased to tell you she is well.’

‘Oh! Really? Thank God for that.’

For a man who has spent the last two hours in the rooms upstairs, he gives a good impression of concern, Martin thought. But then, lust is one thing, concern for wife and reputation, another. He smiled reassuringly.

‘Not only well, but she is eating normally. In fact, after my little talk with her she is co-operating with the prison authorities in every way.’

‘Good heavens!’ Jonathan stared at him, temporarily speechless. ‘What on earth did you say to her, man?’

Martin’s smile broadened. ‘What do you think? I told her of your concern, and explained to her as a medical man that if she did not eat she would do herself irreparable damage, and that that would be no good to anyone at all. I told her that she had already struck her blow by slashing the picture. It was in all the newspapers, she need do nothing more to help her movement. And I explained to her that if she ate now and completed her sentence then you, as her husband, would take full care of her when she came out. I hope that was not going too far?’

Martin frowned and peered at Jonathan over the desk. There was just the faintest hint of a conspiratorial twitch at the corner of his mouth.

‘No, of course not. Not at all. Do you mean she made no attempt whatsoever to starve herself?’

‘Oh yes, she did at first. For two days in fact. But I think it was giving her some pain and my visit . . . persuaded her.’

Martin smiled, his thick lips peeling back briefly to reveal strong teeth only slightly yellowed by tobacco.

‘Then — if she is obeying prison regulations, can I see her?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ This was the difficult part. Any communication between husband and wife at this point would expose his lie straight away. Martin shook his head sorrowfully.

‘Not for the first month, at least. I tried to persuade the governor but he is adamant. You can try to put pressure on from above, but I think it would be unwise. If . . . I don’t pretend to fully understand the female psyche but I get the impression that if Mrs Becket believed she was being granted special treatment she might well begin to starve herself again in some perverted form of protest. I grant it is a strange way of thinking but that is what we have to suffer these days, it seems.’

He watched Jonathan carefully across his desk, the professional frown still thoughtfully in place. There was a slight throbbing pulse in Martin’s neck which betrayed his anxiety, but he judged correctly that only he himself was aware of it. If Jonathan accepted this, it would be all right. No suspicions would be aroused; there would be time for the next step. If Sarah could be kept in prison for even part of her six month sentence, he would have time to cover up every trace of what he was doing in the rooms upstairs. Then she could shout her head off all she liked. No one would believe her.

Jonathan hesitated. ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’

‘Believe me. In my profession, even more than yours, one gets to see more than one type of human behaviour, and what you and I might consider logic is . . . not universally accepted. But if we play it her way I am convinced Mrs Becket will come round without harming herself further. And that is what you want, Jonathan, is it not?’

‘Of course I do, man. She is my wife.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Martin relapsed into silence, guessing the conflicting tides of emotion that were coursing through Jonathan’s mind. Jonathan had come to him because his marriage was in trouble, but that did not mean that he was not still fond of the woman, however oddly she behaved. And he was fonder still of the institution of marriage — and his own reputation. He did not want that destroyed, whatever he did with the girls upstairs. So far, Martin believed, Jonathan saw him as a confidant, a helper. But the relationship could easily turn the other way. And now, above all times, he could not afford to let that happen.

‘You will see her again?’ Jonathan asked.

‘Of course. Frequently. Every day almost, until the Senior Medical Officer returns from holiday.’

‘You will take care of her, won’t you?’

‘Oh yes, of course. To the best of my ability. Your feelings do you credit, Jonathan. Especially when I know the strain she has put you under this past year.’

The two men looked at each other over the table. It was very quiet in the consulting room for a moment, and Jonathan could hear the ticking of a large case clock somewhere outside in the hall. Outside there in the hall, too, were the rich pink hangings of the wallpaper, he knew, the soft pink carpet leading away upstairs. It was a path he had trodden often, over the past year. A long staircase, over a carpet deliberately, luxuriously soft. He had come down it only a quarter of an hour ago, after the most delicious time in bed with the maid, who had removed her apron to reveal the most perfect pair of smooth, elegant breasts, their nipples slightly rouged with lipstick. No one knew he went up there but Martin — and Martin would never tell. After all, it was a medical matter, in a way, and no doctor would betray a confidence.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Life is not always straightforward, but when we married it was for better or worse, I promised her that. And with your help, Martin, I shall be able to keep that promise without losing my sanity. At least this way there are no strings, no ties, no emotional complications. A healthy mind in a healthy body, what?’

‘Quite so.’ Martin smiled, waited a little, and then stood up to indicate that the interview was over. He escorted Jonathan to the door, watched as he took his coat, umbrella and hat from the stand. ‘Don’t worry about your wife. I shall see that her health is taken care of.’

And you will probably want to murder me when you find out how I am doing it, he thought, as he watched Jonathan walk briskly away down the pavement.

14

T
HE ROUTINE was the same every morning. At about half past five a terrible grinding, crashing noise would come from the depths of the prison. Sarah never found out what it was — it sounded as if a giant iron fireplace was being dragged from the wall, smashed with sledgehammers, and lugged from one end of the building to the other. For what purpose, other than to wake the prisoners, she could not imagine.

Then heavy cell doors would begin to open and close, keys would rattle and clank, trolleys would clatter along corridors. The harsh voices of the wardresses would shout orders — ‘Come on, slop aht!’

‘Rise and shine, dress yersel — you’ve two floors to scrub and the loos to clean afore breakfast!’

‘Jump to it, there! This ain’t no workhouse or rest ‘ome! ‘Olloway’s a clean prison!’

Sarah lay on her cold hard bed and listened to the clanking and the rattles and the voices. Despite her discomfort she was glad they were so loud. All night she lay in cold isolation, drifting in and out of dreams and memories. Once she had believed Jonathan was there in the cell with her, and she had reached out to touch him, only to find her hand waving feebly through cold, shadowy air. She had screamed abuse at him and had thought she heard a male voice answering back, not Jonathan’s voice, but her father’s . . .

But none of her night voices were nearly as loud or as real or as inescapably human as the harsh screech of the wardresses.

They woke Sarah up with a start, to the gritty reality of the cold stone cell, the grey light of dawn, the clank and crash of buckets and the hard wooden slats under her back.

She lay and listened. Each voice had a different tone; the words and the volume were much the same but the personality each revealed was different. Some, she was sure, really meant what they said. They hated and despised the prisoners, they were truly obsessed with the cleanliness of the prison. Perhaps it had to be kept clean, Sarah thought, because that is the only way to wash away the defiling touch of the criminals. Some of these wardresses think we are a disease, so they force us to scrub away every dirty mark we make. Then there were others who varied their tone, according to which prisoner they spoke to. That seemed especially cruel, Sarah thought. A wardress would be hearty, jovial with one woman, and then address the prisoner in the cell next door with virulent hatred. So that the second prisoner was denied even the small hint of human sympathy that had been shown to her neighbour.

No one came into Sarah’s cell until nearly seven. There was no point. Though she was a third division prisoner she refused to do any duties, and there was no way they could make her, so they left her alone. She supposed it was tacitly assumed that the forced feeding was punishment enough. But they insisted her cell was tidy, and she agreed to that herself. It gave her a touch of self-respect and a sense of a new day begun. So at six every morning she got up, folded her bedclothes neatly, dusted the table and chairs and bedhead with a little cloth they had left her, and combed her hair.

The comb was her greatest luxury. It was a small bone comb which she had been allowed to keep. It had been in the pocket of her skirt when she had been arrested. It was the one bit of civilisation that she had retained, the one link with her dressing room at home. So every morning when she had folded the grey blankets on her wooden bed, she sat at the scarred wooden table and combed her hair, slowly, diligently, luxuriously. As though there were a gilt mirror in front of her, and ivory-backed hairbrushes and pots of face cream and makeup and phials of scent scattered around the dressing table in front of her, instead of . . .