A Petrol Scented Spring (6 page)

He is behaving oddly this morning. When he examines her, her nostrils detect the usual tobacco and shirt-collar starch, mingled with a new scent of sweat, though the air feels no warmer than yesterday. She is given a bed bath, after all, and her hair is brushed and plaited. Her heart leaps. Is it possible that by tonight she will be held in Muriel's arms? She composes a pithy, defiant, witty speech for the women at the prison gate. If her appearance is truly unaltered, as the doctor claims, she can go home. Mother will make her cloudy lemonade with the perfect balance of bitter and sweet. She will climb Arthur's Seat right to the top, looking out over all Edinburgh, feeling the wind that blows up there on the stillest of days; or take her sisters to pick wild strawberries by the water of Leith, find a patient toad on a shady path, touch a fingertip to his dear dry back to make him jump.

Early in the afternoon, when the sun burns a patch of whitish-gold on the floor just beneath the window, they come. The doctor's tread and less familiar footsteps. The door opens. She last met Doctor Dunlop in Calton Gaol. Older than Doctor Watson, short and stout, with mutton-chop whiskers and a better cut of frock coat. The sort of roguish uncle who offers you a sip of whisky behind Mother's back. She sits up, ignoring the wardress's command, and smiles at him. He does not reciprocate. So now she knows: she is not getting out.

Doctor Watson's face turns beetroot when he catches sight of her. He rasps at the wardress to
get her down
, then, in a new, unctuous voice, tells Doctor Dunlop that the prisoner has gained two pounds since arriving at the gaol. The calomel has sorted out her bowels, which moved twice overnight.

It is intolerable to be spoken of like this, and the disappointment is worse, having come so close to freedom in her head. Tears prick her eyes, but she won't weep.

Our mothers brought us up to exercise self-control. Our brothers might lose their tempers, but it was the duty of we women to exert a moral influence. We were not always angels but, year by year, the habit of restraint became more entrenched. It was for men to make their mark in the world. Women's sphere was internal, a space which must remain spotless. Socially, we existed as a stillness: a half-warming, half-blinding glow from our corner of the room. To raise your voice or, heaven forbid, your hand, to throw back your head and show your teeth in a laugh – or even a terrible glimpse of tongue! – to be present as a creature of flesh-and-blood and impulse and error, was to become at once conspicuous and invisible. Outcast. Arabella knows women who suffer agonies just stooping to chalk a meeting place on the pavement, dreading the chivalrous gent who will see a swooning maiden and rush to her aid. In the beginning, she managed the embarrassment by creating a sort of shame spot, a blur on her left side she was forever looking away from. But here, now, there can be no looking away. She lifts her head, fills her lungs, and roars.

Are the Commissioners aware her treatment is in breach of their rules?

Doctor Watson forces her head back against the mattress.

When she cries out at the indignity, she sees Dunlop wince. She tells him Doctor
Ferguson
Watson is a disgrace to his profession, and to the Commission. Needlessly brutal. Quite without regard for her modesty.

The doctor bends over her, blocking Dunlop's view. His jaw is tight, a whitish margin around his mouth within his florid face. Behind him, Dunlop mutters something about not wanting to undo
all your good work
and for a split-second the doctor's glassy stare sharpens to check her reaction. It doesn't take her long to work it out. He has been boasting of winning her confidence, dropping nuggets of intelligence into his reports. She has told him nothing that matters. What difference can it make if they know about her early rheumatic fever, or her mother's disapproval of militant action? Nevertheless, to have told him anything now seems an error of judgement. This too is more than she can bear.

She fights him, really fights him, trying to sit up. The wardress can't get close enough to help him and Dunlop doesn't try. Doctor Watson warns her she is growing excited. This agitation is not good for her. She must lie back so he can sound her chest. His would-be calm demeanour fools no one. The tendons in his neck are taut, his breath smells violently metallic. She too is out of her depth, past the point of histrionics, revolted by what he has done to her, the talking no less than the feeding, all that cant about cowardly politicians at odds with the public good. The cynicism of it rises within her, filling her throat.

She vomits over his legs. Considering the length of time since her last feed, the quantity is remarkable.

He shouts,
‘You did that on purpose
!'

‘I wish I had!'

His face contorts in rage and disgust. ‘You are out of order.'

‘Take your hands off me!'

‘Will you
lie down!
'

Is Doctor Dunlop reminded of anything, as he watches this scene; might he even feel a pang of exclusion? How like it is to marriage, the uninhibited passion in their voices, the murderous vigour in their limbs. Neither hears Dunlop's cough, his
sotto voce
warning. The medical officer handles her as roughly as he would a man, using all his might to overpower her.

She screams at him, ‘You're hurting me.'

‘And
you
are putting on a show for the company.'

She sinks her teeth into his hand.

‘Damn you!' he roars. His arm draws back. Not the flat of his hand, but a fist.

‘Doctor Watson! Calm yourself.'

The arm drops, the blow unstruck, a cloudiness in both their faces, as if wrenched out of a dream.

Dunlop takes over, despatching the doctor to change his sodden trousers. A wardress arrives to help, but by now Prisoner Scott is docile. She reclines on the mattress, a fetching colour in her cheeks.

That afternoon, when Dunlop has departed and Doctor Watson is absent on his rounds, Arabella gets out of bed. Immediately, the wardress is upon her, dragging her back. No matter. She has stood on her own two feet again.

 

With me, he sulked. Silent days, weeks, months on end. When he spoke at last, I had to smile as if it were a day like any other. As if his moods were as unchallengeable as the weather. If I dared to remark on the change, he withdrew again. I could not rouse him to violence, or any other passion.

The doctor believes the prisoner's resistance may be dietary in origin. He will try three tablespoons of sugar, not four, in the pint and a half of eggy milk, plus regular soap-and-water enemas. The wardresses grumble about cleaning her up, but she's always quiet after, purged of the irritability that so disturbs her rest. He goes over the Governor's head to the Commission and gains approval for two wardresses to remain with her at all times. Any movement seems to excite her, jeopardising her health. There will be no turning a blind eye when she rolls onto her side. Even in sleep, she will obey doctor's orders.

He sees now he has been too lax with her. What he called humanity was weakness. He won't make that mistake again. She is a criminal serving a prison sentence. She has forfeited her right to the respect other women enjoy. Day after day so civilised and ironical and then, for the one hour that matters, to turn hellcat, spitting and clawing, making all his successes look like empty boasting. Well, he's not done with her yet.

 

Each day he follows a fixed routine. Urine samples are taken early, enemas administered late. The feeding takes around two and a half hours. His part is over in twenty minutes, but until the liquid has been absorbed into her system Lindsay and the wardresses must sit it out, clamping a towel over her mouth, fingers ready to close her nostrils. They do it in relays: it's tiring on the arms. Only when the contents of her stomach have passed into the small intestine can she be left to sleep.

So far, the physical examination has been a relatively dignified affair. He has touched her with a formality that is almost a seeking of permission, and she has anticipated each gesture, lifting and closing her arm over the thermometer, offering her wrist, unbuttoning her nightdress and averting her face a moment before the stethoscope touches her skin. There has been a trace of satire in her movements, it is true, but also grace, and physical collusion. A rhythm. As if they were dancing.

For him to deviate from this protocol, to grasp her chin and push the thermometer into her mouth, is not much less shocking than a blow.

Twenty-four hours have passed since Doctor Dunlop's visit. He ignores her wrist, a finger on her neck the way a stockman checks a cow. She is tempted to spit out the thermometer as she did on the first night, but what if he is trying to provoke just such a reaction? If she obliges him, he will be free to vent the anger boiling inside him. She is afraid of this anger. She doesn't know why. What could he do to her that could be worse than the feeding?

He will not speak, and she cannot with the mercury in her mouth. At last he removes it, checks the reading, writes it down.

‘Silent today?' she says drily.

He closes his bag and moves towards the door, nodding at the wardress to indicate that he is finished here.

 

The wardresses complain about the stink. Her stink. By now she barely notices it. The window has a small casement to allow the circulation of air. Although suspicious of her suddenly breaking silence, they decide it can do no harm. Once the glass is pushed open she hears the singing, faint at this distance, but evidently a crowd. Florence, the stout one, slams the window shut. She assures them she will not tell. Besides, Doctor Watson has admitted these nightly gatherings take place. They exchange glances. Jean (thinner, with the beginnings of a moustache) says, ‘Ach, open it, afore we're poisoned,' and Arabella spends a pleasant hour feigning sleep, straining her ears to pick out Muriel's off-key mezzo.

Two days since Dunlop's visit, and still the doctor holds his tongue when he comes to examine her. His thumb remains bandaged. She must have bitten deep. He behaves as if she had betrayed him. As if she were not his prisoner, but his friend. If she has shamed him in front of his employers, he has only himself to blame: she did not ask him to bring Doctor Dunlop to see her. Though she's glad he did. The visit has left her with a new sense of power, new insight into her captors. Now they have someone to gossip with, the wardresses have Christian names and personalities. They like to gang up on Doctor Lindsay, teasing him, sometimes so roughly that his cocksure grin slips. He reminds her of the boys who sit at the back of her class laughing at Willie McKelvie's jokes: if you call out their names, they're petrified.

She knows she can beat them: Lindsay, the wardresses, Doctor Watson, the Government, all of them. The trick is to make the most of the cards that are dealt to her. No knowing when opportunity will present itself. She must watch and wait and keep herself ready.

Today, after the morning feed, one of the wardresses sponges her face. When Doctor Watson enters the hospital, he is accompanied by a tall man in an exquisitely tailored coat. She can't help comparing him to the doctor. Softly fleshy where the other is lean. Both of them white-skinned but, where the doctor's pallor calls to mind a switch stripped of bark ready for a thrashing, the visitor's is milky, with two faint spots of colour that, in a girl, would be called rosy cheeks. A lack of definition around the jawline, those boneless-looking hands. But Councillor Stewart is man enough to notice that she is a woman. His little eyes seek hers, his pink lips pursing and parting like some creature anchored to the seabed. She meets his look, feeling her eyes grow large and sorrowing like those portraits of Arthurian maidens so popular when her mother was a girl. He introduces himself as a representative of Glasgow Corporation, surprising the doctor by bending over the bed to take her hand. Though his touch is clammy, she doesn't pull away. The doctor's face reddens. She can well imagine the objections he raised with the Governor. Interesting, that he can be overruled.

Councillor Stewart says she must not think herself forgotten. The Lord Provost himself awaits news of her. This will be Janie Allan's doing. Her father is one of Glasgow's wealthiest citizens. He has pulled strings with the Corporation, or perhaps Janie persuaded the councillor herself. Either way, his presence here proves him a friend. Yet the air between them is charged with something more than simple friendship. She looks into his eyes, and sees the roses in his cheeks shade into a blush. Every cell in his body is attuned to hers. The heat of this knowledge spreads through her like brandy. She fills her lungs and lets the breath out in a shuddering sigh. His grip on her fingers tightens, his gaze quite naked. Her eyes bore into his, sensing his longing to change places, to lie prone as she looms above him. She tells herself she does not understand this intuition, but some demon inside her extends her tongue-tip to her lips as she complains of thirst. Councillor Stewart murmurs a faint ‘dear lady'. The doctor's voice is loud as he says it is her own free choice not to eat or drink, his face showing the immense effort of will that keeps him from breaking their hands' clasp.

Councillor Stewart asks if there is anything that could be done to make her more comfortable? A bath, she says. The doctor replies that she is washed according to prison regulations. Her lips form a fleeting
moue
as if to say
you see how it goes with me here
. Doctor Watson's eyes flash, but what can he do? She holds the power now. She asks the councillor to arrange for her to petition the Commission. She cannot expect the doctor to breach regulations, but if she could address his masters directly, she is sure they would exercise compassion. Councillor Stewart says she may consider it done. At last she smiles at him. The blush spreads to his ears. Rather rudely, the doctor says they must move on. He steps aside at the door, allowing the visitor to go first. She knows he means to follow without a backward glance, but he can't help himself. His head turns. She raises her eyebrows at him before he closes the door with a slam.

Next morning he informs her that she may dictate her petition to Doctor Lindsay.

 

Prisoner Gordon is still losing weight. She screams in her sleep, dreaming of the feeding tube. Awake, she is never less than hysterical. She flinches at the mere sight of the doctor. He tells himself he'll give her something to flinch about, but he won't. Her nearness disgusts him like matter under his fingernails. He prescribes liquid bismuth to stop the diarrhoea that is making rectal feeding so problematic. It tightens her bowels, but makes no difference to the unspeakable odour she gives off from every orifice. When Doctor Dunlop visited, somehow she summoned the strength to insult him. This remarkable show of vitality gave the medical adviser a misleading impression, and it is not the doctor's place to introduce doubts into his mind. He was appointed as a firm hand in a faint-hearted profession. He cannot show weakness now. He must continue with the regimen and hope the minuscule traces of nourishment she retains will get her through her sentence.

He thought the disruption caused by Dunlop's visit would put paid to further interference, but no: that ass Stewart must be given the run of the gaol and touched to the shallows of his sentimental Weegie soul by Prisoner Scott's comely suffering. So now her hopes are raised by this damn-fool petition. After all he has said about the inadvisability of such a step. In his daily report to the Governor, he writes ‘She told me afterwards that the man did not show any sympathy'. He surprises himself with this fiction, but it cheers him up.

Matron continues to make trouble. She waits until he is across in the criminal lunatic department, and barges her way into the women's hospital. Prisoner Scott complains about not being allowed to sit up, giving the meddling hag just the ammunition she is looking for: where's the sense in taking six wardresses off the rota, leaving her short-staffed, merely to see that Prisoner Scott lies flat on her back? The Governor requires him to answer this point in writing, which means the Commission has been informed. The doctor explains, for the umpteenth time, that sitting up brings on sickness, in which case he is wasting his time feeding her, they might as well let her go now. He understands the Commissioners wish her to serve the full nine months, or is he mistaken? ‘That remains to be seen,' the Governor says.

 

After due consideration, the Commissioners refuse Prisoner Scott's request for early release.

She looks stunned when he tells her. Her eyes darken with the threat of tears. He says he knew it would come to this, he tried to protect her from needless disappointment, but she would have her own way. She screams at him to get out. The wardresses stare at the floor. He says he will return when she takes a more rational view.

But that doesn't happen. She sinks into a decline, her lustrous eyes dull, the ripe push of her lips pinched with misery. He hates this shrivelling, as he hated her triumphal glow after Dunlop's visit, both ways of getting back at him. When he examines her, she yields like a sleepwalker, absent, unseeing. She even submits to the evening feed, then cries out, complaining of heart pain. He examines her, finding an apex beat one inch inside the left nipple line. He could tell her this heart murmur is aggravated by distress, what she calls pain is actually fear, she is in no immediate physical danger. But explaining anything to her is a waste of breath, she'll only find some means to turn it against him, so let her lie there and worry.

The night of the storm, a wardress comes to his door just as he's sitting down to the cold tongue supper his housekeeper has left for him. It's Thompson, one of the relief staff transferred from Dundee Gaol. Prisoner Scott is very bad, sir. Talking queerly. He must come quickly. He leaves the meal on the table, quits the house in his shirtsleeves. The air is dense with electricity, thickly humid, the sky like a sheet of lead. And now, in a flash, magnesium white. Thunder grates above him as he crosses the prison yard. The first fat drops of rain spatter his white shirt. He takes the stone stairs two at a time, bringing the smell of outdoors in with him, the unearthed charge. She looks up from the bed and the current jumps between them. He wants the wardresses out. Impossible. There would have to be a reason, and even he does not know why. But they seem to catch his mood, backing away from the bed.

‘What's the matter?'

He asks the prisoner, but it is Cruikshank, the other wardress, who answers. ‘She says she's in pain, sir.'

‘Where?'

In a listless voice, as if speaking of someone she hardly knows, Prisoner Scott says, ‘My chest.'

Cruikshank says, ‘Her heart, sir.'

He ignores her, addressing the prisoner, ‘Palpitations?'

She nods.

He sits on the side of the mattress, touching the back of his hand to her brow. Her skin is sweaty, but not fevered, her pulse uncharacteristically faint. The energy kindled by that sprint up the stairs still fizzes in his chest. He takes out his stethoscope. Thompson moves to help him but he waves her away and unfastens the nightdress himself. There is no question of indelicacy, a doctor's hands are God's instruments, yet some breach is involved in this act of undressing. A compromising of professional detachment.

As ever, the hospital is several degrees cooler than the air outside. Gooseflesh rises under his damp shirtsleeves. He raises the stethoscope pad to his mouth and breathes on it, as he was taught to do at medical school, not a courtesy he observes habitually. The metal kisses her skin.

The wardresses open the casement windows. The warm air smells of wet earth. Lightning flashes, followed by an almighty clap of thunder. The prisoner's face pales. Fasting purifies the complexion, and artificial feeding has not changed the blemishless gleam of her skin. How lovely she is, stretched out on the bed like this, her body soft and unresisting. He cannot allow himself to think this, not here, not now. But a shiver passes through him.

She says, ‘Does this gaol have a lightning conductor?'

‘I expect so.' His eyes follow the stethoscope's progress over her breast. ‘Are you afraid of the storm?'

‘I'm praying for it to strike me dead.'

One of the wardresses tuts.

‘Come now,' he says in a bluff voice, ‘the pain's not that bad.'