A Petrol Scented Spring (5 page)

Muriel never receives the letter. The Governor says a note in an unfamiliar hand would only inflame the family's fears, making them think Prisoner Scott too ill to write herself. The sister is troublesome enough as it is. Some damn fool let her into the Commission in Edinburgh the other day. She got into the Chairman's office. They're all writing to the gaol, the sister, the mother, that woman he fed in Edinburgh.
She
begs the Governor to be present at every feeding, to satisfy himself that it is done
with the least possible cruelty
. The words are underlined. What does Doctor Watson make of that?

The doctor says it's obvious. Lacking the grounds to make a formal complaint, she is trying to smear him by innuendo. Fortunately he enjoys the Commissioners' complete confidence. A sore point for the Governor. It is his gaol, the chain of command runs through him, he receives the Medical Officer's daily reports and forwards them to his superiors, but for all this, the doctor's presence undermines him. Twice their differences of opinion have gone all the way to Edinburgh. On both occasions word came back: Doctor Ferguson Watson must use his discretion. The Governor has given thirty years of his life to the Prison Commission, Doctor Watson has not yet one year's service. Who wouldn't suspect deals in back rooms stitched up over a dram and a sixpenny cigar? And yet the doctor's a nobody. You only have to look at him to smell the manure on his boots. Amazing how far he has got on a few Latin words, a university degree, and a grand opinion of himself.

Yesterday, the Governor learned that Doctor Lindsay had taken a day's leave: Doctor Watson did not require his presence. It is not Doctor Watson's place to decide when a member of the prison staff can take a holiday. The fellow needs taking down a peg or two. The Governor can't get a day's peace without Matron knocking on his door, chewing his ear off.
Himself
has doubled the amount of dirty laundry coming out of the prison hospital.
Himself
has hand-picked a team of wardresses to assist him.
Himself
draws up the rota, to make sure none of the other staff get in. When Matron catches them coming off shift and asks them to report, they tell her the doctor has forbidden it. To her face, they say it! Is she the Matron of this gaol or not? The Governor has some sympathy, but what can he do? And there's a useful side to the Medical Officer setting up his own wee fiefdom. When it all goes to hell in a handcart, it won't be the Governor's fault.

Those suffrage women are out on the High Street every night, ranting and singing their damned hymns. The King and Queen are due in town next month to open the new infirmary. The Provost calls him in, wagging his finger about not wanting trouble. To cap it all, they've arrested another one in Rutherglen, trying to burn down somebody's fine house. She'll be arriving on the six o'clock train from Glasgow.

 

Frances Gordon is four feet ten, a mouth-breather, sallow-skinned, small-eyed, pug-nosed. One of the moral purity brigade, destined to provoke variations on the same drawling put-down wherever she goes.
Don't worry, hen, you're safe
with me
. She's no better at fire-raising than Arabella, but brave. Without that freakishly small nose, she could have stood the feeding. Made as she is, if you block her throat with a tube, she stops breathing.

The Doctor thinks she's acting. She is put in a cell. He doesn't want her anywhere near Prisoner Scott, the two of them giving each other the vapours. The Prison Commission needs a photograph. Half these women use aliases. Without a picture, it's impossible to keep track of them once they get out. But this one's full of tricks, screws up her face like a monkey the instant she spots the camera. He wants to give her chloroform, have Lindsay take the picture while she's out cold, but the Commissioners won't hear of it. Terrified of opening their morning paper to find that Prisoner Gordon is actually Lady something-or-other, a great friend of the King.

Whoever she is, she's no lady. They never had much to do with quality, down in the doctor's corner of rural Ayrshire, but he'd expect something more in the way of complexion and height, more like Prisoner Scott. If you're heir to half a county, why would you breed with a yellow-skinned dwarf? There's something about the woman, her ugliness, her English whine, her odd peppery smell of autumnal woods, and her evident horror of him, that scratches at his nerves. If she's going to resist: fine, resist. But this endless caterwauling . . . Aye, he shouts at her. It's the only way to make himself heard. If the wardresses don't like it, too bad. But next morning he has thought it over. He speaks in the tone he used on the farm, seeing a cow through its first calving. That's how he must think of her: a creature blundering against its own animal nature. In the days to come she will plead with him, her voice sticky on his skin, assuring him she is trying to co-operate; if the feed comes back up, she can't help it. Those mouse's eyes battened on his face. He'd almost rather have the screaming.

At least Prisoner Scott is healthy, he can count on her sound constitution. This one is a runt. God knows how she's made it to forty-five. He feeds her three times a day and she vomits back every fluid ounce. She's getting weaker, not stronger. Severely dehydrated, her lips crusted with dried saliva, her breath hellish. She asks if she can swill her mouth out with water and he braves the stench to bring his head down to hers and whisper ‘Drink some, drink some – no one will know.' You'd think he'd stabbed her. The wailing turns into a fit of hysterics, then she's gasping, hyperventilating, one hand clutching her heart. ‘
For God's sake,
woman, get a grip on yourself
.' The wardresses look at him like he's the Devil. The fat one with the goitre raises her voice to him. ‘She cannae breathe with that thing in her mooth.' Rank insubordination. If Prisoner Gordon is too far gone to exploit it, he can be sure Prisoner Scott will sniff it out. But he'll not lower himself to win over the wardresses. If it's a choice between ruling by love or fear, he'll take fear.

It has been at the back of his mind ever since he fed the Moorhead woman in Calton Gaol, a solution to the physiological difficulties. Sugars, amino acids and salt can be absorbed in the lower digestive tract without the enzymes secreted in the stomach, and the humiliation might prove helpful. It's not a queasiness he shares, the rectum is just another bodily part, no need for all this shame, but if others are fool enough to feel it then he'll turn it to use. In Peterhead there were hardened criminals he reduced to lambs with a single enema.

The wardresses pretend not to understand. Or perhaps they are so stupid they really can't see it. He spells it out: an Enule, otherwise known as a suppository, with enough prisoner's laudanum to relax the bowel. He resists the urge to slap that smirk off Lindsay's face. For a few moments the wardresses could go either way. If the fat one refuses, the other two will follow suit. He asks if they want the prisoner's death on their conscience? She won't eat, the feeding tube doesn't work: do they have a better solution? Look at her: skin and bone. She won't last the week unless they do something. Lindsay turns it, repaying the withheld slap. His silly grin reminds them of their wee brothers. They like to tease him about the sweetheart they know he doesn't have. The lad's a fool to let them take liberties, but that's his own affair. When he grips the patient's shoulders they move into position. On the count of three they turn her. Prisoner Gordon is screaming like a banshee. It would take so little force to stop her noise. He startles himself with this thought. Not that he'd do it. It's just the infernal racket getting to him. Lindsay parts her yellow buttocks, revealing the brown pucker of her anus and, below, the mouse's fur around her sex.

She is fed in this way thirteen times, over four days. Throughout, she suffers from extreme nervous prostration. The wardresses can't stand it. He allows them to administer the laudanum. It's the only thing that gives them any peace at all.

Arabella has found a new insult to vex Doctor Savage. He is her gaoler, plain and simple. His job is to keep her behind bars. She does not believe he is a doctor at all. What proper doctor would practise in a prison? She'll grant he's familiar with the basics, he can use a stethoscope and thermometer. Who couldn't, after ten minutes' instruction? Incensed by this goading, he reels off his qualifications. It takes some time to list them all. She has to bite her cheek to stop herself from smiling.

‘All that studying,' she says, ‘just to torture poor wretches in prison.'

He tells her he studied to heal the sick, and to understand those whose sickness is mental.

‘If you mean me, you've still some way to go.'

‘Oh I understand you well enough—'

She raises an eyebrow.

‘—a neurotic hunger for attention. A classroom of children is not enough: you want the Prime Minister and all his cabinet hanging on your words.'

With anyone else I would call this a game. A ritual trading of insults. I've known married couples who did it all the time, loving married couples. But the doctor is not the playful type.

She tells him
the Prime Minister and all his cabinet
could ignore her forever if they gave her the vote.

That derisive push of breath down his nose. ‘Twenty years ago it was the
right
to study medicine. Now it's the vote. Once you have that, it'll be the
right
to minister a parish, or kill for your country. And you'll get those too, in the end, and none will satisfy you.'

On balance, she is rather delighted by this speech. So what would satisfy her, in his opinion?

‘A husband.'

She laughs. ‘Oh Doctor Savage, I had thought you would do better than that.'

‘Nature seeks a balance. Masculine and feminine, virility and tenderness, brain and womb. Your body, a woman's body, is a part of Nature. Denied the balance of wedlock and motherhood, it must remain unfulfilled.'

‘And what about you?' she asks softly.

‘We are not discussing . . .'

She cuts him off. ‘You are not married, I think. What of your fulfilment?'

He wants to talk seriously, without this persiflage, so he answers her question. ‘I do what is needful.'

The mirth dies on her lips. If he is not referring to consorting with prostitutes, and already she knows him well enough to rule this out, then he must mean masturbation. She can say the word in her head thanks to Grace, who has a doctor's forthrightness about such matters. Grace says all men do it before they are married, all the cold water in the Firth of Forth couldn't stop them. They suffer needless guilt and worry about it sapping their vital energies. The whole subject ought to be dragged into the open. Arabella is sure Grace is right, but still, she is embarrassed.

He sees this and flushes, ‘
Potassium Bromide
.'

‘Ah,' she says faintly.

And now he's furious. Did she think he meant vice? If she'd witnessed what he's seen in his career, she wouldn't have made that mistake. He presumes she has heard of the Wassermann reaction? (She hasn't.) A test for syphilis. He had a hand in developing it, under Professor Browning. A blood sample is drawn, serum extracted, a simple compound added. Agitate the test tube and you have your diagnosis. People with no symptoms who might not find out for years: now they can be told ‘you are infected'.

‘And they can be cured?'

‘Some of them.' Without meaning to, she has taken the wind out of his sails. But he rallies. ‘They can be prevented from breeding. We have a tool that could revolutionise public health policy.'

She wouldn't have called him an eloquent man, but on this subject he's unstoppable. His paper on unusual fertility in syphilitic patients was published last year. Locking up infected prostitutes is not enough. Every child born to foreigners here must be tested, the wandering of gypsies controlled. The tin cooking utensils they make and sell are a carrier of infection. Their habit of begging food from farmers compounds the danger.

She is sceptical. Just because rural people are poor, it doesn't mean they're unhygienic. He says he knows what he is talking about. He grew up on a farm. But surely, she says, his own family would not eat from unwashed dishes? He meets her look. She falters. He tells her he has worked in asylums in Glasgow, Lenzie, Paisley. In each place, the same story: one in seven lunatics tested positive. The politicians are fully aware of the scale of the problem: more destructive to the nation's health than tuberculosis or alcohol. But they would rather bury their heads in the sand and see innocent lives blighted, to spare their manly blushes. It is a scourge. A plague. It will not just
go away
.

She has not seen him like this before. Angry about the cruelty of the world, the short-sightedness of the powerful. Proud to be on the side of right. He reminds her of herself.

He tells her a woman whose husband dies of syphilis may remarry, remain clinically healthy, and yet bear syphilitic children. He has seen them, a few months old, already blind, or deaf, their bones weakened, their spleens enlarged. Others live for decades in apparent health, only to suffer sudden attack. These women may be blameless in their conduct − some of them − but they are a horrible danger to the community.

Women. Their fault.

‘And what would you do about them?' she asks, acid-sweet.

‘Test every woman admitted to a laying-in hospital. Those found to be positive would be sterilised, the children removed to an institution.'

‘And the men—?'

He looks at her.

‘—what is to happen to the men while these women are mutilated and their children incarcerated?'

His face shows a familiar exasperation. It is too serious a matter for rhetoric. He is talking about the opportunity to wipe out cretinism and disease, to eliminate a significant source of human misery. If every country adopted such a system they could weed out the breeding stock and improve the entire human race.

Again she asks, ‘Why take no action against the men?'

‘Syphilis is not a notifiable disease. The government favours a voluntary approach.'

‘For men.'

‘The women will be in hospital anyway.'

‘So women are to pay?'

‘Half measures are better than none.'

Always she has this sense of rival perspectives within her. Feminine, masculine. Her own true judgement, and the order of things outside her, the prejudices the world calls common sense. Men are not split in this way. They sense our inner division and call it neurosis.

‘Thank you,' she says.

He knows he shouldn't ask. ‘For what?'

‘Confirming my principles. Women are to be tested because we're more biddable, and our unjust treatment will continue until we become as violently unreasonable as men.'

She has long known this, it is what pushed her into militancy, so I wouldn't accuse her of insincerity. She means every word. But unlike him, she understands that they are also playing a game.

 

‘How are you sleeping?'

‘The bedding could be cleaner.'

‘But the sleep itself?'

‘Too many dreams.'

‘Of what?'

She turns onto her side. He will allow this sometimes, pretending not to notice. ‘Are you an admirer of Doctor Freud?'

‘That charlatan.'

‘Maybe. But it's intriguing, no: the idea of an unconscious life whose proof is its invisibility?'

‘A fool's paradox.' He looks at the wardress, who walks out.

‘Have you never suspected you might possess a hidden self?'

‘No.'

She smiles as if at some private joke, ‘I sense him.'

‘Do you?' he says sarcastically.

‘A gaoler who envies the lawbreaker's freedom.'

‘Claptrap.'

‘You're sure of that? Only, the strangest look just crossed your face.'

‘And I suppose you envy the racegoers whose stand you set fire to?'

Again and again he comes back to this. The flames didn't even take hold, and still he can't forgive her.

‘The fire was intended as a cathartic. We live in diseased times. That's why I'm in this hospital. And you, for that matter. Our sickness is symptomatic.'

‘I'm not sick.'

‘Not even at heart? When you push that tube down my throat?'

‘I do what has to be done.'

‘But what do you
feel
?'

‘Feelings don't come into it—'

She gives him a long look.

‘—And what do you feel when . . . when you are fed?'

‘I feel powerful—'

He laughs, a short sharp bark.

‘—you can imprison my body, but there is something within me stronger than my flesh.'

‘You are
doing yourself harm
, weakening yourself in ways you may never recover from. You don't understand the risks.'

‘I think I do.'

‘Then you belong in a lunatic asylum, not a prison.'

‘You're too afraid of weakness.'

This takes him aback. ‘Every man fears weakness.'

‘But not like you.'

 

When I meet him, two years hence, Hugh Ferguson Watson will be charming, good natured, quietly humorous. Admittedly, a heaviness in his silences, an occasional rush of blood to his face, will suggest he might be otherwise if I cross some invisible line. This masculine edge of danger will only make him the more attractive to me and, in so far as he is aware of it, he will seem pleased. But in June 1914, he is not a man who cares overmuch how others feel towards him. He applies judgement. Approves, rather than likes. His step quickens when he goes to meet the person who stimulates his intellect, but this is not the same as forming an attachment. Relations with his parents are strained by disappointment on their side and frustration on his. None of the Watsons understands why an eldest son with first claim on the farm would choose a trade that depends so greatly on the practitioner's affability. His teachers have impressed on him the vigilance required if he is to rise to a social distinction matching his intellectual gifts. The first question he asks in any situation is not
how do I feel?
But
does this demean me?
And,
how can it
be turned to use?
Every impulse but one is filtered in this way. The exception is irritation. The portcullis of his intellect lifts. That country boy's body unbends. Heart pumps, lungs fill, muscles flex. This is his only indulgence.

Lord knows, he's provoked to it. There's a case of tuberculosis in the men's hospital that could yet turn into an epidemic. Summer is always bad for contagious diseases. A housebreaker has shingles. In the upper ward, a wife-killer lies baw-faced with parotitis and a baker who used adulterated flour is sweating his way through scarlatina. Half the criminal lunatic department has gone down with enteric. On top of that, he must deal with the thirty or so women the last damn-fool Medical Officer weaned off gin with prisoners' laudanum. He has enough on his hands without having to worry about healthy women trying to kill themselves for the vote.

An MP is asking questions in the Commons about his treatment of Ethel Moorhead. There's a procession of busybodies trying to get into the women's hospital: chaplains and town councillors and freemason solicitors, respectable matrons who lick envelopes for women's suffrage. The Governor forced his way in last night. What's the point of writing daily reports if the old soak doesn't trust him? He'll be turning the Prison Commissioners against him, passing on tittle-tattle from Matron. Careful how he does it, nothing that puts him out on a limb, but the Commission secretary can be relied on to read between the lines. Why else would Dunlop be here? Doctor Dunlop has been a friend to him in the past, but he's another who has not risen so high without knowing how to hedge his bets. ‘Just a flying visit,' the Governor says, as if you can introduce the Prison Commission's medical adviser into a situation like this without stirring up a byke.

The wardress is instructed to give Prisoner Gordon an extra dose of laudanum, which should keep her quiet, but one glance will show Dunlop she's not gaining weight. Thank God for Prisoner Scott. A complete vindication of the feeding policy, if only she would behave. But she has a genius for sensing what he wants of her and doing the exact opposite. She knows something's afoot, and puts up an extra struggle against the morning feed. Not that she's ever passive, but today she's like a demon. Lindsay has to straddle her. The milk that comes back up is pink with blood and gritted with chips of tooth enamel.

At eleven he comes back and tells the wardress to bathe her and comb her hair. She wants to know why. He puts on a show of changing his mind and her face falls, but she won't beg him. So now neither of them have what they want, unless he can think of a way of getting her washed that won't look like weakness. He's sounding her chest when she announces she has heard screaming. This seems unlikely: the hospital and the female cell block are separate buildings. Has the wardress been gossiping, or is she fishing for news? He says her ears are playing tricks again, but the blasted woman is like a terrier with a rat:
she
knows
there are other suffragettes here. Why are they not in the hospital? He tells her she should be able to work that out for herself. The hospital is for the sick. They are taking their meals and serving out their sentences. That shuts her up.

 

She passes the empty hours by ranking all the people she hates in order of precedence. Before she began campaigning for the vote she would have been shocked by the thought of hating anyone. It was ignorance that made people do hateful things, they just needed help to see the light. She knows better now. She has been mocked, and insulted, and called obscene names by men who dine with bishops and professors. She has been shouted down by rich men's wives who couldn't care less about their destitute sisters. It is hard to decide whom she detests more: the society women who use the position they have gained through marriage to deny other women a more honest influence, or the men who find the idea of women voting too killingly funny. Today she hates neither as much as she hates the prison functionary who doesn't care enough to form an opinion on the question.