The Children's Book

There was no real need to smash anything.

There was an imperative call.

It was May 1914. She had sharp stones. She had gone on flint-collecting picnics with other WSPU women. Out of rage with her past life, which would now end, and the dreamy, comfortable, unsatisfactory muddled order of Todefright, she quite deliberately took a collection of stones —some of them rare, some of them collected from the endless shingle at Dungeness—old flints and chalk from the Weald (including one or two Stone Age knapped hammers), a chunk of Etna pumice (too light and springy to do any damage), a rugged chunk of the White Cliffs of Dover. These stones were in a big, stoneware bowl Philip Warren had made, which stood in Olive’s study in lieu of a bowl of fruit. In amongst them—put there apparently casually, to get lost amongst its semblances—was the Dungeness stone with a hole that had been found in Tom’s overcoat pocket on the beach. She took it deliberately, knowing that to take it would hurt Olive, and half-understanding that Tom had meant to—be revenged on Olive, evade Olive, free himself from Olive and being written about? Olive had been mildly in favour of the suffrage, as part of the atmosphere of Fabian lawns and Fabian firesides; she had not approved of the violent acts. She would take Olive’s stone with the hole and throw it at the golden bowl.

She did nothing more, for days. She was afraid. She did not know how afraid other suffragists had been. Her teeth ached with fear and she dreamed that they all fell out and stuck in her breakfast porridge, like bloody pebbles. She waited for a sign and knew she had it when she read that Sylvia Pankhurst had drawn, on a prison slate, an illustration to

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight.

She wasn’t well. When she breathed out, she could smell her breath. She knotted her hair grimly, packed her bag, which looked like an artist’s bag, and set off.

The way in was as Philip had described it, still accessible as it had been before Sir Aston Webb’s lovely new curves and clinical new spaces had been opened. She slid in behind two men wholly preoccupied by a heavy crate, straw-stuffed and unwieldy. She passed like a black spectre behind a white forest of plaster casts. She went on, and in, past tombrails and brass fenders and suddenly came on the Russian tomb where Philip had slept on the empty plinth, under the doves and acanthus leaves. Here she stopped and rearranged her possessions, the bag full of stones, the packet of buns. When Philip had hidden there, there was no electric lighting. Now, as the light died in the roundels of windows, she saw switches and systems of wires. She sat in the twilight, and then in the dark, letting her eyes grow used to it. She had bound her hair in a dark scarf. She looked around for the staircase with the iron rail, and did not see it. She waited. Night and silence spread. Cautiously she switched on a light and hid behind the tomb. Nothing stirred. The light, under a green shade, illuminated the white-tiled Gothic vaults. She needed a thread: she was lost in the labyrinth. She scuttled out of hiding, moving bent and hunched along corridors. She found the stone staircase and went up. At this point, she realised she had been idiotic. The door into the gallery was locked. Philip Warren had found and kept a key. She had not even thought about a key. She was like Alice for ever shut out of the garden, peering through the keyhole.

Because the act required her to do it, she looked around, seeking out the answer there must be. And there was. There was a panel on the wall of the tunnel at the foot of the stairs, with a whole jumble of keys and screwdrivers hanging on tarred string and hairy string, all lengths. They were not labelled. She tried one and then another and saw she needed a longer and larger one. She found it. The door ground open.

And there in the moonlight were the cases of gold and silver, gleaming and glinting. Hedda went up to them. There was the reliquary, there was the Gloucester Candlestick. There was no sign of any guardian of the treasure.

If the breaking of the glass was not too loud a crash, she would have time to wreak real damage on the things. She was sweating. She was cold. She took off her coat, and wrapped a large sharp flint in it, and swung, cautiously. The glass held. Hedda was filled with hatred, and swung with all her strength. The sides of the glass coffin splintered and fell in. The blow was muffled but the shards rang out on the tiled floor.

She took one of the Dungeness stones and brought it down on a little chalice, which was scraped, but held its form. Hedda was still alone in the high hall. She bashed a delicate spoon, silently enough, on a velvet mat which masked the noise. She turned her attention to the Candlestick.

There it stood, unique, mysterious, with its writhing, energetic dragons and imps and foliage and helmeted warriors. She was feeling very odd. She remembered Tom, reading Tennyson aloud, in the Tree House. This thing was like the gate of Camelot.

The dragon-boughts and elvish emblemings

Began to move, seethe, twine and curl: they called

To Gareth “Lord, the gateway is alive.”

And Hedda did see shape-shifting, climbing, flickering movement on the object. She must destroy it. Instead, foolishly, she launched Tom’s hole in a stone at it. That glanced off a beast which was being slaughtered by a gnome with a knife. Hedda sank to her knees, as the warders came rumbling and creaking, and pulled her up, not too gently.

She was shut up in a police station, and put on trial. She knew she exuded a stink of fear and stood upright in the dock, whilst tremors ran up and down her body as though she was giving birth to something. Some of the WSPU had come to support her, and their expectation of fearlessness was part of her torture. She had not asked to see her family. She was condemned to a year’s penal servitude for damaging government property and taken to Holloway Prison.

In the cell was a Bible, and a book called The Home Beautiful. This caused her brief amusement. She had had a hot bath, which she needed, and had been given some worn, ill-fitting clothes, which she also needed, for her own were drenched by her body’s terror.

She knew she must refuse to eat. She did not know if she had the courage to refuse to drink. She began to walk. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. The walls closed in on her and she began to sob, and went on walking. She decided she would refuse to drink, thinking confusedly that in that way she might die, which she appeared to want to do. She walked. She walked. She fell and picked herself up again.

They brought her, as they brought all the hunger-strikers, a tray with a little jar of Brand’s Essence of jellied beef, an apple, some fresh bread and butter, a glass of milk. She did not touch it. She walked.

•  •  •

They brought the tubes, the gags, the clotted fluid (Sanatogen, from Germany). She did not fight, because she was shaking too much, but subsequently vomited over a wardress, and was slapped like a baby, for dirtiness.

Once, which was the worst thing, she started thinking of the little jar of beef jelly as though it had the authority of the act she had performed. She must have the beef jelly. She must not. She must. She walked. To and fro, and then stopped and took up the spoon.

The taste was intense, through her furred tongue. She gulped down the whole jar, spoon after spoon. A woman came in and said—with what Hedda felt was contempt—“That will set you up a bit, that’s the first sensible thing I’ve seen you do.”

Hedda wept, retched and vomited, and was slapped. She knew now that she had disgraced herself and could