Read Online Half a Crown by Jo Walton - Free Book Online

wasn’t quite true anyway. I thought it would be better to come from outside. I didn’t entirely trust these bobbies to pass a message on to him quickly, and I didn’t want to attract their attention. Besides, there was a chance they’d just let me go without bothering him at all. I could always tell them later if I needed to. It was like having an ace in reserve. I decided to keep quiet and wait. I sat still, my coat around me, and fell into a doze. I don’t know how long I slept.
    I was woken when another six women were pushed into the room. One of them had a huge red mark on the side of her face. Conversation turned to them and to the riot, which had apparently got completely out of control. The women had been at another police station, which was full, before being sent on here. “So whose side were you on, then?” a fat woman asked the woman with the mark.
    “I wasn’t on either side, as such,” she said. “I was just trying to get away when I got clobbered. As for what they were saying, I liked the singing, but I didn’t like hearing things said against Mr. Normanby. It’s not as if it’s his fault he’s in his wheelchair, is it? Terrorists killed Sir James and they tried for Mr. Normanby, just like they’d kill us all if they had the chance.”
    “That lad did have a point though,” said the woman next to me. “Mr. Normanby isn’t a really strong leader, not when you compare him to Hitler.”
    I couldn’t believe she’d be foolish enough to say this, after the riot, and sure enough the marked woman spat at her, after whichthe room erupted. Women who had been sharing cigarettes and sweets beforehand were clawing at each other and shouting names I hadn’t heard for years. I cowered on the bench, my bare feet tucked up under me. The police had to turn a cold water hose on two women to get them to stop clawing at each other. When they separated us, I went with the woman who had seemed friendly. We were put in another cell, almost the same as the first, but with a thin high window on one wall, through which I watched the dawn coming. Every so often a policeman would call a name, and a woman would go off to be processed, then be brought back and another name would be called. At last I slept a little more. I was startled out of an uneasy dream to hear my name called.
    It wasn’t Uncle Carmichael, just an ordinary policeman, ready to process me as he had been processing the others. It must have been nearly midday by the light. The policeman made me walk in front of him down a badly lit corridor, then another policeman opened the door of a little cell. I stepped in, and had time to see dirty white tiled walls, a table, and two chairs before one of the men behind me pushed me hard in the middle of my back. I had to take a couple of running steps and then fell, banging my knee. I waited for a moment, on the ground, then got up slowly. “Sit down,” the policeman said. It was then I realized it hadn’t been an accident, he had quite deliberately given me a shove. I was furious.
    “Why did you push me?” I demanded.
    “Sit down, or do I have to make you?” he asked. He was quite a young man, red-haired. He sounded almost bored.
    I sat down. It seemed like the best policy. He sat down on the other side of the table, and put my papers down in front of him, along with a file card. “Elvira Royston,” he said. “Just eighteen. Resident in Kensington.”
    My papers had Uncle Carmichael’s address, of course. “I’m staying with a friend in Belgravia,” I said.
    “What friend? Was he at the rally with you?”
    “Elizabeth Maynard, and yes, she was,” I said, stressing the pronoun.
    He looked me up and down, quite obviously, not even trying to hide it. “So a pair of young girls went quite unaccompanied to the rally,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Dangerous, that is, as you’ve seen.”
    “Her fiancé was with us,” I said, stretching the truth. “Sir Alan Bellingham.”
    I had hoped that Sir