A Petrol Scented Spring (20 page)

Arabella's father took seven years to die. Apoplexy. Heart seizure. Malignant growth. A series of blows from which he rallied less and less convincingly. His face shrank to a skull's concavities. That big soldier's body with its meaty neck and barrel chest dwindled to a bundle of bones. She glimpsed him once without his pyjama jacket, when her mother was washing him. The blueish ball and socket of his shoulder was like a five-year-old boy's. But it was his mind's dwindling that afflicted her most. He became, not someone else – even that might have been endurable – but no one. A scarecrow's head stuffed with leaves and straw. He knew he was dying but didn't take it personally, while she sat by his bed, exhausted with the effort of willing him to be himself.

Now she knows exactly how he felt.

Random words rise to her lips, phrases divorced from any conscious intent. She knows it is important not to voice the babble in her head, but sometimes the stale hospital air seems to ring with the echo of her thoughts. Has she spoken aloud, or is it a figment of her brain? She has acquired the knack of not hearing the wardresses' gossip. Once in a while she will catch them staring, as if waiting for her to answer a question or react to a taunt. How strange it is to smell their greasy hair and sweaty armpits, the particular stink of an unwashed uniform ironed into yet another day's service, and to feel so detached.

And then she hears his footsteps. Ah God, how good it will be to clash with him, to feel strength re-entering her limbs, anger firing her blood. To become
real
again.

 

I have hated her for fifty years. I have thought of her so often it's hard to remember we have never met. I feel closer to her than I did to Hilda. We both know how two hearts can yearn to beat as one and still every word spoken leaves its scarring of hate. At least they had an excuse. Or was it not like that for them, did she take him by the hand and lead him to a place where he could let himself be loved?

 

The prison swelters in the grip of a heat wave. When Thomas ventures out, the town is stricken. Lassitude in the empty streets, pavement strays prone and panting, blinds three-quarters drawn to protect the shopkeepers' wares. Back at the prison, the doctor's face shines with sweat, but he will not shed his frock coat and walk about in his shirtsleeves like a labourer. On any other day he would be doing the rounds of the Criminal Lunatic Department by now. This departure from routine irks him but cannot be helped. He has twenty-four hours. It must be settled before the Chairman arrives to start haggling over her release. She must be told how to play it, what to ask for: her passage to Canada and the wherewithal to make a new life. She will not like the idea of taking their money. He will convince her of the necessity. But first, he must declare himself.

He has been adding meat juice to her feeds. It makes her less drowsy, but more argumentative. Her eyes flash when he walks in. The wardresses know this mood of his. They scramble off their backsides and out into the corridor.

‘Up,' he says.

‘What?'

‘On your feet—'

She stares at him.

‘—don't you want to?'

‘Of course I want to.'

He extends a hand to help her off the mattress, but she ignores it, using the bedframe to lever herself up.

He smiles.

‘What?' she asks.

‘You look different, standing. When you're not in a temper.'

‘I may walk about?'

He nods. She takes a step and staggers. He steadies her. Her legs are weak after so long in bed, but she won't give up. She tries again with his hand supporting her upper arm. Reaching the empty stretch of floor in the middle of the ward, she gives a gasping laugh.

‘You can't imagine how I've hungered for this. Sharper than hunger. It's movement the body craves, more than food.'

This is his chance. All he has to do is keep hold of her arm and, with his other hand, draw her waist towards him. He even has the words to breathe in her ear.
This is
what I have hungered for
.

 

He is unnerving her, standing there with that queasy simper. Smiling is not part of his repertoire, unless she counts the occasional sarcastic grimace. Something has happened. She should have paid more attention to the wardresses' gossip.

‘Yesterday . . .' he begins.

‘You insulted me.'

‘You said you would kill me.'

‘I said I would shoot you. I did not say I was a dead shot.'

‘Your friends would kill me. That mob out there.' He pauses, ‘The police have word of a plot to bomb my house.'

Ethel. She knows beyond doubt. Who else would think up such a crack-brained scheme? Under the noses of the authorities: what a coup for the cause! She has a history of outrageous stunts. Three grand houses in upper Strathearn in a single night. They say the blazes lit the sky. She is not squeamish about human targets either, marching into that schoolmaster's classroom to attack him with a dogwhip. He had strong-armed her out of a meeting. What might she do to a doctor who almost killed her with the feeding tube in Calton Gaol?

He watches her closely, ‘It is to happen at night, when I'm in bed, asleep.'

‘But you'll sleep inside the prison, now you know.'

‘I wouldn't give them the satisfaction.'

Her stomach turns over. He will be blown to pieces out of stubbornness. Ethel will be hanged. ‘The Governor will overrule you.'

‘The Governor would like nothing better than to be rid of me.'

‘Then don't give
him
the satisfaction.'

 

She seems worried. He did not foresee the annoyance mixed in with her alarm, but still, this is promising.

‘I knew what I was taking on. I didn't expect to be popular.'

‘
They're going to blow up your
house
. You think they're not capable of it? Don't be too sure.'

‘They?'

‘Whoever it is. We do not always fail.'

‘You side with them even in this.'

‘We've never killed anyone.'

‘But for me they might make an exception, eh?'

She looks away. ‘Accidents happen.'

‘They might kill me
by accident
?'

Her voice cracks, ‘It‘s not funny.'

‘Not for me, perhaps, but what is it to you?'

Her eyes are lowered. Only the shallowness of her breathing gives her away. He waits. Will she touch him? Plead with him? Weep for him?

‘I don't want anyone's death,' she says at last.

‘Not even mine?'

She lifts her eyes to his.

 

Seven days from this moment she will be released. Tomorrow she will meet with the Chairman of the Prison Commission and the horse-trading will begin. The texture of her encounters with the doctor will change. This giant who has blocked out the light, dominated her thoughts, coloured her dreams, will shrink to man-size. Their volatile intimacy will end.

But today, in her ignorance, she wants to write a letter. To warn Ethel. And to protect him. His neat ears, the freckled backs of his hands, his precious flesh.

He says no. She argues with him, a tremor in her voice, her hands reaching towards him, before dropping to her sides. A thrill in his blood as he refuses, like the pleasure he felt toying with Prisoner Edwards, but with the complication that Arabella's desperation is for his sake. And so at last he says yes. But he will not let her use the pen. They sit side by side on the bed, eyes fixed on the notebook in his lap, both of them remembering that other letter he wrote at her dictation, both thinking how far they have come since then. As always, she is naked under her nightdress. He takes off his coat. The smell of her skin. His breath on her cheek. Her hair brushing his ear. It has to happen. Why else let her stand and walk about? He is changing the rules, letting her know that what was forbidden is now possible. Desire can be acted upon. She may bite him, strike him, claw at him, or open her mouth to his. The choice is hers. She pretends not to know, but he can see her palpitating heart through the cotton of her gown. She wants the letter to name him, to forbid his harming above all others'. She turns her face towards him. Their eyes, mouths, inches apart. Her soft lips. Who closes the gap? The pen drops from his hand. She moans, yielding. Is it now? Do they lie down on the bed?

Thomas could not tell me.

Doctor Lindsay takes a day off to visit his parents, and when he returns the doctor tells him he will be more useful in the men's hospital. His daily contact with the prisoner and the wardresses who attend her is at an end.

Almost everything I know he told me that day in the prison garden. I have gleaned a few details from newspapers stored in public libraries. My friend Patrick in the Colonial Office pulled some strings and got me a glimpse of the Scottish Office files. But what passed between them from Tuesday to the following Sunday, when she was released, is not recorded.

It is like being locked out of my own life.

Yes it was so long ago, and almost everyone is dead and it can't be so many years before I'm among them, but for now it still matters. I walked down the aisle to become the sort of smiling woman whose home smells of warm biscuits and rings with children's laughter, and that hope turned to ashes. Yes, I had adventures. Egypt, Syria, India, the Gold Coast. I saved so many lives, and found a man to spend the rest of his days with me. I would not want to have missed any of that. But the price of making a new life was exile. I had to train as a doctor in Glasgow, then turn my back on Britain, leaving behind mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, all the friendships I had forged since leaving Perth. And I had to turn my back on him, too. My husband.

 

Half a century has passed and I still don't know whether he was done for before we met; whether his heart was already claimed, or smashed; the exact quality of his regret; whether another wife, more selfless and forgiving, or ruthless, or vainglorious, might have redeemed him. Whether the love story pieced together in these pages is mine, or hers.

 

Some things I do know. He could stare at her with his eyes full of wanting but, unless she pushed the moment beyond ambiguity, nothing would happen. The crucial question is, what was
she
capable of?

I have read about prisoners kept in solitary confinement. How it erodes the personality. The way they come to depend on their captors. The demoralising effects of harsh treatment interspersed with kindness. Far worse than unstinting brutality. But Arabella is a political prisoner. Even as she suffers, the soldier in her sleeps with one ear open.

 

‘What if I said you'd had all you could take—?'

She squints at him.

‘—the prisoner has been on hunger and thirst strike for the past five weeks. She does not appear any the worse for her treatment . . .'

‘I am very much the worse for it.'

‘. . . at the same time, it seems desirable some cases should not be fed in this way over too long a period.'

‘Why?'

‘All good things come to an end.'

She does not even think about it. ‘No—'

He looks at her as if she has taken leave of her senses.

‘
—I won't go.'

‘Why not?'

‘
It will be made to look like surrender.'

‘
For God's
sake!
'

She wavers. Will she look back on this moment and curse her wrongheadedness? He seems well-disposed to her today, almost fond. But when has he acted in her best interests?

‘This comes from them, not you. You do what they tell you to.'

‘I've resigned.'

He should never have told her. The soldier's ear pricks up.

‘Why?'

Does he admit it: ‘You'?

She laughs. His eyes fill with dismay. The woman softens, but the soldier says
wait
.

‘What will you do?'

‘Whatever it is, it will be nothing to do with politics.' He swallows, ‘I might go overseas.'

Canada. She blushes as if they are saying aloud the words she hears in her head:

You
spoke once of taking me there.

And you never gave
me an answer.

Why not, she wonders now? Because it seemed too much like a dream, or a trick. Or because, even as the woman was tempted, the soldier knew this day was coming. He would not risk raising the subject if there was the slightest possibility of losing face. They are willing to let her out. She sees the agony in his features and her heart strains towards him, but she bites her tongue. Discretion was ever the better part of valour.

Besides, there is the question of power. Hers returning, his diminishing.
I have resigned
. If it was done to win her favour, he made a mistake.

When he has gone, she sends word to the Governor via a wardress. If the Prison Commission is minded to release her, she will hear what they have to say.

Next morning she is given a bath. The Chairman himself enters the hospital. A balding, pouchy-faced fellow with a nose like something fashioned out of orange peel. He takes a fatherly tone, letting her sit up, patting her hand, which she tolerates because she has a schoolteacher's forbearance with those less intelligent than herself. He wants her to break with the Women's Social and Political Union, to give her word she will not organise or incite illegal acts. She refuses with such finality there is nothing more to be said. They sit in silence. He does not get up to leave. She nearly laughs aloud. Her tea and toast suppers count for nothing. She has beaten them.

The Chairman returns the day after, having taken instruction from the Secretary for Scotland. He tells her he is her friend. Not everyone wishes to see her liberated. The prison doctor, for one, argued against it most vehemently. She tells him they can hold her until she is a hundred, she will never give up the cause.

What can he do? The authorities want rid of her: no more questions in the House and headlines about indecent assaults on the nieces of national heroes. Whatever she says or refuses to say, they think it unlikely Prisoner Scott will return to militant action. They are prepared to release her unconditionally. At this news, she gives up her hunger strike.

The doctor brings her a tomato. Firm, still green around the scar where it was so recently plucked from the stem. She sniffs it, holds it in her hand. Almost too beautiful to eat. But in the end, she bites. The skin bursts, spraying seeds down her chin.

They laugh.

She could be let out that very evening. Or the next day. The newspapers are predicting it. The wardresses are stood down. Muriel takes a posy of sweet peas to the prison gate. Within the hour, Arabella buries her face in their silky fragrance. She is out of bed all day, walks twice in the prison exercise yard, eats three good meals.

The doctor assigns the rest of his duties to Thomas Lindsay. Time is short. All her talk is of liberty, the pleasures she has missed. Playing the piano. Visiting the theatre. Walking the shoreline at Gullane, opening her arms to the wind. The sea is in her blood. Great Aunt Charlotte was married to a harbour master. She takes her middle name from her. She pauses, distracted by a thought. Where does his middle name come from, that Ferguson?

Does he answer? Would he lay himself so open to her?

‘I made it up. To lend me distinction.'

 

Can he truly believe they will see each other again once she has left the prison? Does he imagine taking the train to Edinburgh, knocking on her mother's door? ‘
Come
in, come in, delighted to meet you . . .'
Or is he reduced to childish fantasy? A fairy-tale coincidence many months later. Seated in the concert hall, half-drugged with Schubert. Glancing up to find her face, her shocked look reflecting his own, that same shaky smile.
My God.

Does she give him hope, let him hold her, touch her, murmuring promises between their kisses? Is she cruel enough to pay him back like that?

There is one other possibility. They both understand this is all they will ever have. These two days locked away from the world.

 

She is liberated discreetly at ten forty-five on Sunday morning. He makes one last physical examination, finding no mark on body or limb. Muriel and Ethel come in a cab, taking Arabella away to a dentist's house on the moneyed side of town. The dentist's daughter has become a good friend. That afternoon, the Trades and Labour Council hold a rally on the North Inch to condemn forcible feeding. Thousands cheer the prisoner's release.

 

Sun, air, pollen-drunk bees, the chatter of friends. A sister's hands to wash her hair. Feather pillows, laundered sheets, warm scones with this year's strawberry jam, as many hot baths as she cares to take. These dear women hanging on her words, gasping and exclaiming.

Doctor Mabel Jones arrives to examine her. Does she stiffen, insisting ‘No need'? But her physical condition must be checked: who knows how that brute might have damaged her? Pulse, temperature, her chest. And now a departure from the familiar routine. Her petticoat is lifted. ‘
No! You may not!'
Mabel assures her she will be very gentle, nothing like the assaults inflicted on Frances Gordon, Maude Edwards and Fanny Parker.

‘Assaults?'

They explain.

Arabella writes a letter to the newspapers. It is printed in the
Glasgow Herald
two days after her release.

It is very clear that forcible feeding was
inflicted upon me in order to extract an undertaking, and
further on account of the part I played at the
by-election in Ipswich, when Mr Masterman was defeated. To
try to force a person to yield her opinions under
pain is torture, and nothing else. The only effect it
has had upon me is to strengthen my principles.

 

Unlike most of respectable Perth, which favours the Edinburgh paper, the
Scotsman
, the doctor is from the West. He reads the
Glasgow Herald
.

He likes to breakfast in the kitchen, as he did as a boy on the farm. While Mrs Hendry makes his porridge, he reads the paper and drinks a cup of strong, sugary tea. Even in summer he cannot abide it less than scalding, the thought of tepid liquid makes his gorge rise. He hears the porridge sucking and dimpling as it comes to the boil. An advertisement for liver pills catches his eye. These damned mountebanks! Mrs Hendry says something about the weather being set to break. And now he sees it. A letter to the editor. His heart bucks in his chest. He spreads the paper across the table, on top of plate, cup, cutlery, butter; sends Mrs Hendry to the shops. ‘But the porridge, sir?' ‘
Just go!'

A message from her. His quick eye has taken it all in, but he reads it again, lingeringly, hearing the words in her voice, trying to squeeze some new meaning from them. There is none. A draining feeling in his arms, his fingers, the adrenaline ebbing.

His tea goes cold. The porridge solidifies in the pan. He has not felt like this since his sister died. This bruised sensation around the eyes, the dull ache in his throat. But the tears won't come. What has she done to him? He is still sitting there when Mrs Hendry gets back. She takes one look at him and turns around, claiming she has forgotten the bread.

To gull him like that. After everything they have been to each other. Oh aye, she pulled the wool over his eyes. Had him mooning after her like a lovesick calf. Those damn fools at the Commission: they had to insist on letting her out, had to cave in to the Governor's bleating about the cost and the strain on the staff. Did he not warn them they should keep her? He wasn't so drunk with her he forgot his duty. They can't lay that at his door.

He writes to David Crombie, Secretary of the Prison Commission, his nib slicing across the paper. She has returned to militancy, as he predicted all along. He said from the first she would never give in. He told them she should remain in prison for as long as possible. He knew she would defy all authority the minute she got out. She is about to do something desperate, of that he has no doubt. She is practically an anarchist. She believes every act of destruction draws attention to their cause. Should anything very serious happen, they may be certain it is done by the hand of Arabella Scott.

He pauses, imagining it. Waverley Station ablaze. St Giles Cathedral. Holyrood Palace. They will catch her red-handed. She will come back to him. Raging, weeping, insulting him, writhing under his hands. It will begin again.

All at once he pictures Crombie's face, those bushy eyebrows lifting. He will need to go carefully if he is to retract his resignation. Is the letter too intemperate, even unprofessional? Will a copy be circulated to the Commissioners? And if to them, then to the Governor, who will take the opportunity to pass on who knows what low gossip from the wardresses?

I have formed
such opinions by allowing her to have her own say
over long periods when I put the wardress out of
hearing but never out of the hospital
.

He reads it through again. What has he to be ashamed of? Aye, he sounds angry – is he not entitled? He will not tear the truth up and drop it in the wastepaper basket. They have let her win. He alone stood up to her. Let them hear it. He addresses the envelope, attaches a stamp, then, at the last moment, scrawls across the top of the letter:
though I offer this opinion
I give it as a private man
.

She sets no fires. Within a week the nation is at war with Germany. The suffragettes suspend their campaigning and are granted an amnesty. Arabella goes to France as an officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps.

It is over.