“Just get in, we’ll clean them.We need to be clean.”
Rachel didn’t like it, but she stepped into the tub, squinting a little under the heavy spray of hot water.Mary climbed in after her and pulled the curtain closed, leaving a bloody print behind on the fabric.She put her head under the water and shut her eyes against the stream.Rachel stood in front of her, water ricocheting uncomfortably into her eyes off her mother’s body as she watched pink trails of blood course down the drain.After a moment, Mary knelt down to her eye level.
“That witch did this, you know,” she said, nodding knowingly.“She’s always trying to punish me.You remember this, Rachel.”
Rachel would indeed remember it.And Mary wouldn’t turn up again for another three years.
CHAPTER 12
EMILY
Toronto—June 19, 1961
“How are you doing, my girl?”William muttered beside Emily on the wooden bench outside the courtroom.
She took a deep breath, tried to quell the nervousness that was swirling in her stomach like a flock of starlings.She tapped the edge of the bench in time to the clock on the wall across from them, which told her they’d already been waiting three hours to see a judge.
“Wishing I’d eaten a bigger lunch, for a start,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.Her dad let out a reluctant chuckle.
They’d had lunch as a family at home, in relative silence as each of them contemplated the day, weeks, and months ahead.Afterward, Emily had picked up her handbag and said goodbye to her tearful mother at the door.
“I’ll write, if I’m allowed,” she’d said, embracing Bess tightly and breathing in the smells of Aqua Net and sugar.“I just won’t be able to be very direct.You’ll have to read between the lines.”
“William Radcliffe?”a deep voice called now, and Emily and her father looked up.A bailiff stood outside a set of double doors twenty feet away.“You’re next.”
“Well,” William said quietly.“Put on your best-actress-award face, my girl.Here we go.”
Emily stood, whispered “I love you, Dad,” and followed him, deliberately lagging and fixing an irritable expression onto her face, mouth pursed in what she hoped would be evident obstinacy.
The courtroom was small but grand, with shining dark walnut wood floors that matched the high bench on which sat a large and passive-faced judge.He wore flowing black robes that hardly contrasted against the wood-panelled wall behind him, creating the rather disconcerting illusion that his head was floating in mid-air.Emily had never been in a courtroom before.
The bailiff rattled off the judge’s name and credentials.
“Come forward,” the judge drawled, hardly looking up from a sheet of paper in front of him.The bailiff ushered Emily and her father into place near a desk that, she thought, would have typically been reserved for the accused in a criminal trial.Though the women taken before a judge under the Female Refuges Act had committed no crime, they were apparently still treated as though they had from the outset.
“My docket here says that your daughter, Miss Emily Carolyn Radcliffe, aged twenty-four, has been brought here today for reasons of incorrigibility, is that correct?”
Her father cleared his throat, and Emily’s gut twinged as the reality of what they were about to learn hit home.This was the moment they would discover just how easy it was to be incarcerated under the FRA, and whether she would, in fact, be going to prison for three months.
“That is correct, your honour,” William said, shifting his feet.
“State your case,” the judge said, making a note.
He still hadn’t even looked up.He could not have appeared less interested in her as a person.Was this the same judge who did all the sentencing under this Act?She hoped there were more.It could not all be down to one man.
“It’s uh, it’s my daughter, you see.”They had briefly rehearsed what William would say, but they had deliberately decided not to oversell it.Part of the question here was whether it truly was so easy to be sentenced to jail time under this Act for subjective misbehaviour.Emily didn’t wanther father toconvincethe judge; she wanted to see whether it would be a fair fight at all.
“She’s old enough to be married now but has no interest,” William said, and Emily squirmed a little, thinking of her last conversation with Jem.He’d been heartbroken.And, understandably, angry.But he’d also shouted and made her feel small and ridiculous for taking the path she wanted, and she didn’t think she could ever forgive him for that.
“She’s at home with her mother and me,” her father continued, “but she stays out until all hours with no regard for curfew, or propriety at all.No respect for authority, your honour.”
The judge nodded, finally looking up at them.His eyes raked Emily up and down once, utterly dispassionately, as though simply confirming that yes, she was a woman.His attention returned to her father.
“And you feel she is in need of reform?”
William hesitated only a beat, and in it, Emily sensed his reluctance to say that she needed fixing.She loved him for it, and her heart swelled.“Yes, your honour.”
“Very well, then,” the judge said, gaze returning again to his docket.“I hereby sentence you”—he referred to his notes—“Emily Carolyn Radcliffe, to no less than six months in an industrial refuge.You will be transferred to the Mercer Women’s Prison forthwith.”
