The Umbrella by A.M. Stuart

Author:A.M. Stuart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oportet Publishing

6

As the lights were extinguished on her first night in Holloway, Harriet huddled on the straw mattress on the iron cot, the only furniture in the gloomy spartan cell, apart from a bucket in a corner. She pulled up her knees and held herself close, absorbing the unfamiliar sounds — metal doors clanging, women’s voices, the tramp of boots on the iron walkways … and the smells — carbolic mixed with overcooked cabbage, bad drains and unwashed humanity.

She had been issued with the prison uniform of a dark grey dress and white pinafore both stamped with the broad arrowheads marking her as a convict. A white linen cap tied beneath the chin completed the fetching ensemble.

Now her prison-issue chemise scratched her skin, and she could swear she could feel the bites of unseen insects. Tears borne of fear trickled into the flat pillow covered in hard cotton, as she thought of her father’s disappointment and wondered what James would have made of his wife’s incarceration. She liked to think he would have understood, but he was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do to help her.

Thinking of James turned her mind to her dead child and the pain that she had shut away with a determination to get on with life, whatever life without Thomas in it would bring. Like a barely healed scar, it tore open when she least expected it, bringing back the loss of her child with frightening clarity. She howled the grief into her pillow.

She was so sunk in misery that she didn’t hear the rapping on the wall beside her.

“Harriet.” The thick stone walls muffled the voice of Eloise Warby.

Harriet raised a hand and knocked back, leaning her face against the cold, damp wall.

“Remember, never surrender!” Eloise said.

Harriet closed her eyes and took a deep steadying breath.

Never surrender.

Did she have the strength to commit to a hunger strike?

Sitting in a meeting of the WSPU surrounded by her sisters in the cause, it had seemed so easy, the right thing to do. Now, faced with the reality of a situation over which she had no control, she was not so sure.

As Constance Lytton had said, as a tactic, hunger strike had worked for the first women to test the resolve of the authorities. After a few days, they had been released to the acclaim of their sisters.

Harriet hugged herself closer. If it meant an early release, simply refusing food did not seem unendurable.

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