A Petrol Scented Spring by Ajay Close

always carried with him? Don’t ask. No more barbs. Not until he’s posted the letter.
    â€˜So,’ he says. ‘Dear Muriel.’
    â€˜ My dear Muriel.’
    My dear Muriel, I know how anxious you must be without news of me, your imagination running riot . . .
    His look says she is trying his patience. ‘Stick to practical matters.’
    But even practical matters are subject to censorship. He will allow no reference to the feeding. She wants Muriel to make arrangements for when she gets out of gaol, some sympathiser’s house where she can convalesce. Her appearance will be too shockingly altered for her to go home. This sentence, too, he refuses. He lets her give details of how she came to be arrested, then a message to her mother, begging her not to worry too much. Talking to her sister, her voice softens, her carapace dissolving in the pity she will only accept from this one source. Oh Muriel . For a minute or so he writes at her dictation, the nib’s scratch across the paper following her voice, his breathing audible with the effort of keeping up. She slows down for him. Such a strange feeling, the two of them cooperating like this. She wants a solicitor to challenge the legality of the feeding.
    He has lost his temper several times over the past few days, but she still can’t predict when he will snap.
    â€˜The letter is long enough.’
    â€˜It’s hardly begun.’
    â€˜Don’t overtax the Governor’s goodwill. Or mine.’
    Scolded like a naughty child. Was this his plan all along, this new way of making her feel small? Let it be a lesson, she thinks. No more truces.
    The letter must be signed off. He suggests yours sincerely . She snorts. She is not writing to her bank agent. She wants with love to all , which he accepts, followed by yours ever the same . His eyes narrow. What does that mean? Exactly what it says: her affections are constant. It is how she always ends her letters, omitting it would strike her sister as most peculiar. Which is true, as far as it goes, but he’s right to be suspicious. The phrase alludes to her commitment to the cause. Grudgingly, he transcribes it.
    She notices the way he is bent over the paper. She is lying on her side to read the words as he writes. Their heads are almost touching.
    The wardress comes back with the mercurous chloride. A laxative. To be added to her next feed.
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    A man and a woman conversing daily, mistrustful at first, but with increasing familiarity as the weeks pass. Anyone can see where this is leading.
    And when the man has complete knowledge of the woman’s body, complete freedom to touch her mouth, breasts, genitals, anus? When he subjects her urine to chemical analysis, and forces her jaws apart with a metal gag. Where does that lead?
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    She hears the footsteps first. Two doctors, six wardresses. Up the stairs and along the passage. Every morning and evening, and still her heart lurches. She turns face-down on the thin mattress, clinging to the bed-rail, squeezing her eyes shut. Later she will wonder if she might have shamed him by looking him in the face, but when it matters she is powerless. Calloused fingers loosen her grip, their nails dig into her flesh, prising her hands from the rail. They turn her onto her back and pin her with their weight, their lousy bodies, their suffocating stink. She opens her eyes and there is Doctor Lindsay with his smirk to remind her how her nightgown gapes in the struggle. How the fabric, soaked by spilled liquid, clings to her form. But she will not acknowledge this because her task is to resist, and if she thought about the violation she would die of shame.
    And then she sees Doctor Watson in his butcher’s overall, greasing the rubber tube, and all rational thought flies from her head. He forces the gag between her teeth. She bites down on it, pitting tooth enamel against tempered steel. It prises her jaws so wide she fears the bone will snap.