The Balliols (21 page)

The news of Lucy's arrest was telephoned through to Stella from the Police Station. As Edward Balliol still refused to have a telephone in his house, there was no means of getting the news through to Ilex. “I suppose I shall have to go out and see them,” Stella thought.

She first rang up Miss Draft to get the exact details of the business.

“Oh, yes,” Miss Draft told her. “Your niece was one of thirteen girls who broke post office windows simultaneously at six this evening.”

“I never knew my niece was militant to that extent.”

“I prefer to keep the names of my girls secret.”

“Of course; you're very right. Were all these windows broken in the same district?”

“Within a mile of one another.”

“Then they'll be brought before the same magistrate. It'll be quite clear it was a conspiracy. They'll all get the same punishment. Who else was with them? Anyone that's been in prison before?”

“No.”

“That means a stiffer sentence. The magistrate can't pretend that they've been influenced by a leader. He can't make a scapegoat of anyone. I suppose it'll be a month; at least.”

And now for Edward.

It was not a meeting to which she in the least looked forward. It was less than a fortnight since she had promised to keep Lucy
out of militant demonstrations. He would never believe that she had kept her promise. He exaggerated her influence over Lucy. He might even believe that she had encouraged Lucy. He would not believe that Lucy cared enough for the Cause to sacrifice her safety for it: that she regarded as soldiers regard a non-combatant, the woman who did not take her full share in the struggle.

She glanced at her watch. It was after eight. What an infernal nuisance Edward not being on the telephone. He would be worrying because Lucy was not back. At any rate, I shall get some welcome for telling him that she's not in danger.

The journey to Ilex was much quicker than it had been when Balliol first built his house. In those days there were so few houses at Golders Green that only one train in every three went through. You had to take your choice of waiting or walking over the Heath from Hampstead. That was over now. They were talking about extending the Tube to Hendon. The row of shops at the cross roads was stretching towards the Brent. It was into a bright blaze of light that Stella stepped at the foot of the Tube steps, and in place of the muddy lane separating the Broadway from the open country across which Bill Sykes had taken his last walk, there was a fine pavement lined by villas, with neatly tended gardens, and well-stocked flower beds. It did not look the same place.

The Balliols dined at seven-thirty. They had left the dining-room by the time Stella arrived. She could tell they had been fretting from the eager, “Yes, yes?” with which Edward received her announcement that she had come to him about Lucy.

“It's all right. You needn't worry. She's quite well. But there's been a demonstration this evening. They've arrested her.”

His worried expression yielded to relief; then became worried again. He had risen to his feet at Stella's entrance and was standing with his back to the large, high-banked fire. He was wearing a velvet smoking-coat, over a stiff-cuffed, stiff-collared evening shirt. The sartorial mixture of formality and comfort typified what should have been the atmosphere of the room and moment: ease, security, the freedom to relax; with a regard for appearance, for the necessity of uniform. You felt that trouble had no right to disturb this placid confidence.

“What's happened: is it serious? Where is she? Is there anything we can do? Can't we bail her out? She'd better be represented in the court to-morrow. Let me see now, who had I better get in touch with?”

He asked question after question, rapidly, without any of his customary impersonality. He's really worried, Stella thought. And for Lucy's sake, not his own. He's not thinking, as so many parents in his position would. “This is going to look bad for us. What are people going to say to us and about us? How shall we explain it away?”

She remembered how Beccles had behaved to her: all that talk about the firm's dignity and honour. Most parents would talk that way in a position of this kind; family honour, family name. Which would be selfishness, would show that they thought only about themselves; that they regarded their children as embellishments of their own prestige. Her brother wasn't like that. He really cared about Lucy. It was about her that he was worrying, not about himself. And because it was not about himself but about Lucy that he was worrying, she gave him the advice that she knew Lucy would wish for.

“We'll go down to the court to-morrow. But it would be better for you to do nothing; let Lucy take her place with the others. Most of them are poor. They can't afford expensive counsel. They'd resent it if one of them took privileges they couldn't. Or anyhow, Lucy would feel they were resenting it. She'd much prefer to be left alone.”

Balliol nodded his head.

“I expect you're right. You know how these girls feel. But I do beg of you to prevent anything like this happening again.”

“You needn't worry about that. She'll feel she's done enough when she's been in prison. That's what they all want: to be able to say they've been.”

“Let's hope so.”

They went down next morning to the Police Court. As Miss Draft had prophesied, the halfpenny Press had splashed the news of the fresh outrage over their front page headlines. The steps and passages of the court were crowded. Extra policemen had been summoned to see that there was no further disturbance. Half of the clamouring women were suffragettes. They were shouting, they were demanding their rights, they were claiming to be witnesses. It was clear to Balliol that he stood little chance of getting inside the court. To Stella for whom such a spectacle was no new experience it was clear that the magistrate would decide that the quickest way of dispersing the crowd was the speedy sentencing of the offenders.
Her prophecy was correct. Long before she had managed to elbow a way to the entrance a voice had shouted:

“You might just as well go home. You can't do any good here. Your friends have been sent to the cells.”

Balliol turned to Stella.

“Do you think that's true?”

“Probably.”

“Can we do any good by staying?”

“I don't see that we can.”

“They wouldn't let us see her, would they?”

“No.”

They turned away. The brief spectacle of the Police Court, the crowds, the pushing women, the hostility of the police, had shown him life from another angle. Until now he had seen the Law upon his side. He supported the Law out of his Income Tax. A policeman was his servant: to protect him. But here was a world where the Law was an opponent, where the police were on the offensive, not the defensive. And it was of that world that his daughter was a part. What she would have to endure during the next month simply did not bear thinking of.

Of what she would have to endure he had small idea. Few persons in his position had. He had not been inside a prison. He had never read an account of one. He was inclined to believe that prisoners were pampered; that the majority were better off in gaol than they were out; they were fed and clothed; they were warm, they had a roof above their heads. Though Lucy had listened to the recitals of other prisoners, she had a very similar picture to her father's. She knew that she would wear rough clothes, wash in cold water, sleep on hard boards, be woken early to long hours. For that she was prepared.

In respect of actual detail she was not surprised. She was not surprised at being locked for hours into an airless, lightless cubicle, while wardress after wardress took particulars of her age, religion, occupation, sentences; at being herded with loosened bodice, one of a long file like so many animals before a doctor who did not even bother to place his ear to the stethoscope that he rested on her chest. She had expected to be hustled into a large room, made to undress four at a time before the other prisoners; to be harried bare-footed down stone cold corridors to the bathroom; to dress, under the wardress' bullying command of “Hurry up there, hurry up!”, into the prison uniform; its black and red ringed stockings; its vast petticoats; the red striped cotton drawers, the third-class chocolate-brown broad arrow jackets; the white cap like a Dutch bonnet, the heavy-soled stiff-leathered shoes; had expected at the end of it all to be housed in a small oblong cell, stone-floored, with a small barred window near the ceiling, a flickering gas jet, two small shelves, one of which was called the table, the other a receptacle for the wooden bowl and spoon of prison fare; the yellow cake of soap, the minute comb and brush, the prayer and rule cards. She had expected the plank bed to look like that.

Had she written out in detail all that had happened, she would not have found matter for surprise in any one single detail. It was for the manner in which things happened that she was unprepared. She had not expected to feel humiliated by the way in which the wardresses ordered her about; in which she had been shoved and bullied
from one place to another. She had been treated as something verminous, outside the pale. It was not so much that she had been actually hurt, as that she had been made to feel that she was of a lower order of creation: that she had put herself outside the range of manners and courtliness.

It was a relief to be alone at last.

She was tired, desperately tired: but she did not expect to sleep. It was not simply the hardness of the bed, or the shortness of the sheets and blankets. At her age when she was tired she could sleep upon bare stone. But though she was worn out physically, mentally she was alert and wrought up; thinking of the battle that was going to start on the next day. For it was going to be a battle. During the hours of waiting in cold corridors she had sworn with the other twelve that their rebellion was not going to end with the smashing of a window: that they were going upon hunger strike: that they would force the authorities to release them before their month was up. “We'll have our next meal in freedom,” they had vowed. They would have that meal together. They would form a Club; the Thirteen Club; once a month they would meet for lunch in memory of that first meal in freedom.

Next morning when the pint measure was filled with its thin oatmeal and water gruel, she pushed it away into a corner. It looked such an unappetizing dish that she felt even if she were not on hunger strike she would not have touched it. If only all the food were going to be like that, perhaps the strike might not be so difficult.

Long before twelve o'clock came, however, she knew she had been deceived. It was a bitterly cold morning. For the first two hours, while she had cleaned her cell, made the bed, scrubbed the floor, she had managed to keep herself reasonably warm. But she had shivered as she had stood through the Chapel Parade inspection, under the constant fire of the wardress' criticism in the Chapel draughts which seemed to blow from every corner. Afterwards, back in her bleak cell, sewing, it had been even worse. She was cold; she was weak. When the midday clatter of tins began, she looked enviously at the pint of gruel, the plate of pocket potatoes. It needed considerable courage to pour the food away into the slop pail.

All through the long afternoon she thought of that wasted meal. Three hours of sewing, then the short trip to fetch the next day's supplies; another two hours of sewing; another pint of gruel, another slice of bread to be flung away. Then three hours of rest before the
lights went out. Those last three hours were the worst. It was too dark to read the small print of the Bible which was the only literature available. She sat shivering, her body aching for food. She thought back over the last meals that she had eaten, that last lunch at the A.B.C. She had ordered a poached egg, a cup of chocolate and a macaroon. A long menu had been on the table. She had ten shillings' worth of silver. She could have ordered lamb cutlets, or roast chicken, or mixed grill; sausages and mashed potatoes. Her mouth watered at the thought. It seemed incredible that with all that variety at her disposal she should have ordered one poached egg. I won't be as silly as that when I get out. First of all I'll have a plate of tomato soup. That'll make me feel nice and warm. Then I'll have a grilled sole, with some butter sauce. After that I'll have a chicken patty, with mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts. I'll finish up with a Pêche Melba; or perhaps a tart. What fruit will be in then? Too early for raspberries. Apples, I suppose. Perhaps I won't have chicken patty. I'll have creamed chicken. How I shall love it! How soon will I be able to have it? I wonder when they'll let me out? They kept Jane Carter in ten days, but then she was very strong. They wouldn't keep me more than eight. Surely they wouldn't? I'm told they try and make you eat, that they force food on you. But they wouldn't do that; not to me, surely they wouldn't? They couldn't, could they? No, of course, they couldn't.

In a week, at the latest in ten days, they'd let her go, she and the rest of the Thirteen Club would have their first monthly lunch. They'd go round to the W.S.M. offices, they'd be weak, ill, tired. They wouldn't make a sensational appearance in the Ballroom, but there'd be a new look for her in Aunt Stella's eyes. There'd be approval, and respect; a recognition of equality.

Aunt Stella would be able to take her into her confidence now; would cease to look on her as the niece for whom she had found employment, just because she was niece; would accept her as a friend; would discuss her plans with her; would say, “I'm thinking of doing this: now does it strike you…? “A friend to whom she could take her own problems, on whom she could rely for sympathy and guidance. It would be wonderful to have Aunt Stella as a friend. She would be proud of her friendship, a friendship that she had earned.

Thus she kept up her spirit during the long three hours, before the knock came on the door; the shouted “Are you all right?”, the flap pulled back; the eye of vigilance peered through the narrow slit.