Doris’s brow crinkled.“On King West?”
He nodded.“The Mercer Women’s Prison.”
“Why did you come here, sir?”Doris asked.
“Ted, ma’am.Well, it seems serious, right?So I went to the police, but they laughed it off.Wouldn’t even take the note.”He frowned.“So I thought someone at the news might want to see it, and I had a delivery ’round the corner anyway.The girl at the desk upstairs read it and said you’re the ones what deal with ladies’ stuff.”
Emily could practically feel the heat burning on Doris’s face beside her.It was only “ladies’ stuff” because it mentioned women.
“Ted, thank you for bringing this to us.Do you mind if I keep it?”Doris asked.
“No, ma’am.As I said, police didn’t give a hoot, but it seemed important.If you’re happy to do something with it, that’s fine by me.I’ve done my bit.I’ll let you do yours.Have a good day, now.”He turned and walked to the elevators.
Doris beckoned to Emily.“Come with me.”
Emily followed her down to her office, where Doris slid her heels off, sank into her desk chair and tore open the paper takeaway bag.
“I’m ravenous,” she said.“Meetings upstairs all morning.My God, those men just goon and onand hardly say anything at all.”She took a large bite of her sandwich and handed the note back to Emily.“What do you make of this?”
Emily scanned it again.“Did you see this, about the…‘incorrigible law’?What is that?I’ve never heard of it.”
Doris chewed slowly.“I don’t know.But there’s all kinds of strange rubbish still on the books, isn’t there?”She took a swig from a cup on her desk.The drink must have gone stone cold hours ago, but she didn’t flinch.“Isn’t there something in the Criminal Code about ‘alarming the Queen’?”Doris continued to eat, keeping her eyes on Emily.“Well,” she said between mouthfuls, nodding at the note.“How do we find out what it is?”
Emily tapped a finger on the note.“Telephone a lawyer?Go to the courthouse?”
Doris nodded.“You got it.I’ve got a friend who’s a secretary at Osgoode Hall.She knows more than half the lawyers upstairs do,” she added, eyes rolling to the ceiling.Doris had friends everywhere, Emily had noticed.She was a sun around which smaller planets clustered, warming in her orbit.
Doris set the sandwich down and wiped her hands on a napkin before leaning forward and fingering through the Wheeldex beside the telephone.After a moment she withdrew a card and picked up the receiver.Emily heard it ring a few times before a woman answered.Doris made brief small talk, then straightened.
“I wonder if you could do us a favour, Helen.We have interest in something called the Incorrigible Law.Has to do with prisons, maybe.Crim—oh?Yes.Yes.”Doris seized a pen from the glass cup on her desk and scribbled something down.“Confirming: ‘the Female Refuges Act’?R-E-F-U-G-E-S?”She nodded and looked up at Emily again.“Do you have the text by any chance?Mmm.Okay.Thank you, Helen, you’re a treasure.Best to Phil.Bye now.”
She set the receiver down and slid the piece of paper over to Emily.“She says ‘the Incorrigible Law’ is the nickname for something called the Female Refuges Act.It legislates women’s prisons, but she says it’s mostly applied to vagrants and prostitutes.”She raised her eyebrows.
Emily swallowed.One didn’t normally hear the word “prostitute” in polite conversation.“Oh my.”
“Indeed.”
Feeling slightly embarrassed, though she wasn’t entirely sure why, Emily dropped her eyes to the prisoner’s note.
“Vagrants and…prostitutesor not,” Emily said, “these are some pretty serious allegations.”
She looked up again at her boss, who surveyed her.“And why doesn’t it matter to you if they’re prostitutes?”Doris asked casually.
“Well…” Emily began.She’d never had much cause to consider “women of the night,” as she’d heard them called.But she thought back to the piece they’d done on battered women, the descriptions fromdoctors about the physical and psychological toll the violence took on women.How for most of them, it had come as a shock.
“One of the things that struck me with the battered women piece,” she said, “was that those women ended up in a bad way through no fault of their own.They didn’twanttheir lives to end up like that.They didn’tchooseto marry men who were violent.We hardly get much choice in whom we marry to begin with.”
“And many men are adept at concealing their violent tendencies,” Doris added darkly.“I’m not sure any woman really knows the man she walks back down the aisle with.The surprises tend to come afterward.”
Emily’s insides tightened, thinking of all she thought she knew about Jem.The more she spoke with women like Doris, who embodied the sort of future she wanted for herself, the more unappealing the idea of marriage became.It seemed astonishing to her that women didn’t freely share the downsides of marriage with one another.Everyone was more focused on maintaining an image, an illusion.Like the magazine itself: a perfect glossy cover concealing the messy topics no one wanted to talk about.
“I agree with you, Emily,” Doris said, rousing her.“I don’t think any woman would choose a path of prostitution, either.Not as such.But we all know the system is set up against women.For many of us—the lucky ones—that just means restriction, dissatisfaction; for others, it spells total ruin and degradation.”She hesitated, then took what looked like a reluctant last bite of her sandwich, as though the conversation had stolen her appetite.“This Female Refuges Act and the prisoner’s note warrant a dig about.”Doris sat back in her chair.“Listen, Emily.You’ve done some good research for other articles lately.I should like your help with the background on this one.”
Emily’s heart leapt.“Thank you!”
“Head up to the Legislative Library,” Doris said.“See if you can locate the law.That’s not to say there isn’t a story here about the conditions inside the prison, regardless, but I think we need to verify the legal bit first, about how the women are getting sent there in the first place.Let me know what you find.”
CHAPTER 4
