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‘Can we gag her?’ he asked his sergeant.
‘No, lad, that’s against regulations,’ the older man grunted.
‘What about a straitjacket?’
‘We ain’t got one of those, more’s the pity.’
Digging my heels into the ground, I continued to express my opinion of the oppressors of womanhood in no uncertain terms. To my considerable satisfaction they had a great deal of trouble moving me five inches, let alone down the steps from the doors of the polling station.
We had just reached the last porch step when out of the bank on the opposite side of the misty street stepped a figure I remembered all too well: Rikkard Ambrose, his classical features as hard as ever, his black cloak wrapped tightly around him. When he caught sight of me being dragged away, he stopped in his tracks.
‘Officer!’ In three long strides he was in front of us. His face was just as unmoving as before, but there was a steely glint in his dark eyes. ‘Officer, what are you doing with this young man, may I ask?’
The sergeant turned, and paled as he saw the visage of the much younger man. He took one hand off my arm to salute. My, my. Mr Rikkard Ambrose had to be someone of importance to elicit that kind of reaction from one of London’s stoic defenders of the law.
I tried to use the opportunity to wrestle free, but immediately the sergeant stopped saluting and clapped his hand around my arm again.
‘Good morning, Mr Ambrose, Sir!’ he said, trying to stand at attention while not loosening his grip on yours truly. ‘Um… Sir, if I may ask, what young man are you speaking of?’
With a sharp jerk of his hand, Mr Ambrose pointed at me.
‘That one, of course. Are you blind? What are you doing with him?’
‘Not him, Sir.’ Reaching up, the sergeant gripped my top hat and pulled it off, so my chestnut bob cut was freed and tumbled downwards. ‘Her. That’s a girl, Mr Ambrose, Sir.’
The expression on the face of Mr Rikkard Ambrose at that moment was quite possibly the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life. His stone face slackened and he gaped at me like he hadn’t seen a single female before in his entire life.
‘Something wrong, Sir?’ the sergeant inquired, dutifully. When no answer was forthcoming from the stupefied Mr Ambrose, the sergeant shrugged, and made an awkward little bow. ‘Well, if you’d excuse us, Sir, we have to take this one,’ he nodded at me like he would at a rabid horse, ‘away to where she belongs. Maybe a night in the cells will teach her not to do what’s only for men.’
‘Aye,’ one of the constables chuckled. ‘Women voting? Who ever heard of something like that? Next thing we know they’ll want decent jobs!’
His colleagues laughed at his joke and started dragging me to a police coach standing not twenty yards away.
In that moment, I made a decision.
I turned my head around to look back. Mr Rikkard Ambrose still stood there, pale and unmoving as a block of ice. Even though he was already a dozen yards away, and the Bobbies dragged me further and further, I could see his stone face very clearly. I could see his dark eyes starting to burn with cold anger. A grin spreading across my face, I yelled:
‘Looking forward to seeing you at work on Monday, Sir!’
Ape Bobby
By the next morning I didn’t feel quite so cocky anymore. That might have had something to do with spending the night in a prison cell, or with the fact that I had made a total mess of my plan, or with the fact that I hadn’t been able to get myself calmed down enough to sleep until midnight.
And when I finally did fall asleep on the har
d, uneven bunk bed in the prison cell, I dreamed of a dozen Bobbies, reinforced by a whole platoon of Ancient Greek statues, chasing me through the dark streets of London all night, shouting: ‘Stop her! Stop the feminist! She has to be at work on Monday! At nine sharp! Catch her!’ I’m not sure which was more disturbing, the horrifying chase or the fact that the stone statues on my tail looked suspiciously like Mr Rikkard Ambrose.
I awoke sometime around three am, my heart hammering so fast I knew I would never be able to go to sleep again.
Instead, I surveyed the luxurious hotel suite the nice policemen had put me in for the night: six square feet of the best of what London’s police stations had to offer. The walls of my temporary home were decorated in an intricate pattern of mould and graffiti. The panorama window - about two square feet covered with a beautiful set of iron bars - offered a spectacular view over the gutter of one of London’s finest dingy alleyways. The door, of course, was designed to fit the standards of the window and was similarly crafted from highly decorative iron bars. The bed, as my back could attest, was also made to fit the highest standards, and was able to reduce your back muscles to a tangle of aching knots within five minutes. All in all, it was a breath-taking place with a charming atmosphere. The previous tenant had even left me a little present in the form of a puddle of well-matured goo in the corner. It emitted the most delicious, stomach-turning odour and completed the whole ambience to misery in perfection. The pale light of the moon which filtered in through the small window didn’t make the scene any cheerier.
At least there was no one else in the cell with me. The policemen had put me in solitary confinement. I would have liked to think that was for my protection, but truth be told, they probably thought it was safer for the other prisoners. After all, they couldn’t want those poor misunderstood thieves, burglars and murderers in the same cell as a raving madwoman who had dressed up as a man and thus had given proof of the fact that she had absolutely no morals whatsoever, could they?
Groaning, I shuffled until I was sitting on the bunk, my chin resting in my open palm. A truly philosophical position, ideally suited for pondering my fate. What would be my punishment for my little subterfuge? Would I be sent to prison for daring to defy the laws of England? Or put in the stocks? Or transported to the colonies like a common thief?[3] That last thought cheered me up considerably. I had heard that some of the colonies were much more civilized and advanced when it came to the independence of women than our dear mother country. Plus, my aunt and uncle would then be a few thousand miles away from me.
But then I thought of my friends and of my little sister, Ella, and immediately regretted my selfish desire to be shipped off to a criminal colony. I couldn’t leave. And even if I could get out of England, I knew I would rather stay and fight for my rights. Running from my problems had never been my style. Grabbing them by the throat and shaking them until they capitulated, that was more my way of dealing with things.
Not that this particular strategy had proven very helpful to me recently. After all, I had tried to grab political freedom for women by the throat, and it had just slipped through my fingers. Would it be like that with every other kind of freedom? Yes, it probably would. It wasn’t just voting that ladies weren’t allowed to do. I was well aware that there were other, even more essential, freedoms.
