Alias Grace (11 page)

“Do you think I have a refined nature?” says Miss Lydia.

“I am certain of it,” says Simon. He wonders if that is her thigh he can feel against his, or only part of her dress.

“I am sometimes not so sure,” says Miss Lydia. “There are people who say that Miss Florence Nightingale does not have a refined nature, or she would not have been able to witness such degrading spectacles without impairing her health. But she is a heroine.”

“There is no doubt of that,” says Simon.

He suspects she’s flirting with him. It’s far from disagreeable, but, perversely, it makes him think of his mother. How many acceptable young girls has she trailed discreetly before him, like feathered fishing lures? She arranges them, always, next to a vase of white flowers. Their morals have been irreproachable, their manners candid as spring water; their minds have been presented to him as unbaked pieces of dough which it would be his prerogative to mould and form. As one season’s crop of girls proceeds into engagement and marriage, younger ones keep sprouting up, like tulips in May. They are now so young in relation to Simon that he has trouble conversing with them; it’s like talking to a basketful of kittens.

But his mother has always confused youth with malleability. What she really wants is a daughter-in-law who can be moulded, not by Simon, but by herself; and so the girls continue to be floated past him, and he continues to turn away indifferently, and to be gently accused by his mother of laziness and ingratitude.

He rebukes himself for it — he’s a sad dog and a cold fish — and takes care to thank his mother for her pains, and to reassure her: he will marry eventually, but he isn’t ready for it yet. First he must pursue his researches; he must accomplish something of value, discover something of note; he has his name to make.

He already has a name, she sighs reproachfully; a perfectly good name, which he seems determined to exterminate by refusing to pass it on. At this point she always coughs a little, to signify that his was a difficult birth, which almost killed her, and fatally weakened her lungs — a medically implausible effect which, during his boyhood, used to reduce him to a jelly of guilt. If he would only produce a son, she continues — having, of course, married first — she would die happy. He teases her by saying that in that case it would be sinful of him to marry at all, since to do so would amount to matricide; and he adds —

to soften the acerbity — that he can do much better without a wife than without a mother, and especially such a perfect mother as herself; at which she gives him a sharp look which tells him she knows several tricks worth two of that, and is not deceived. He’s too clever for his own good, she says; he needn’t think he can get round her by flattery. But she’s mollified.

Sometimes he’s tempted to succumb. He could choose one of her proffered young ladies, the richest one. His daily life would be orderly, his breakfasts would be edible, his children would be respectful. The act of procreation would be undergone unseen, prudently veiled in white cotton — she, dutiful but properly averse, he within his rights — but need never be mentioned. His home would have all the modern comforts, and he himself would be sheltered in velvet. There are worse fates.

“Do you think that Grace has one?” says Miss Lydia. “A refined nature. I am sure she did not do the murders; although she is sorry for not having told anyone about them, afterwards. James McDermott must have been lying about her. But they say she was his paramour. Is it true?”

Simon feels himself blushing. If she’s flirting, she isn’t conscious of it. She is too innocent to understand her lack of innocence. “I couldn’t say,” he murmurs.

“Perhaps she was abducted,” says Miss Lydia dreamily. “In books, woman are always being abducted.

But I have not personally known anyone that was. Have you?”

Simon says he has never had such an experience.

“They cut off his head,” says Miss Lydia in a lower voice. “McDermott’s. They have it in a bottle, at the University in Toronto.”

“Surely not,” says Simon, disconcerted afresh. “The skull may have been preserved, but surely not the entire head!”

“Like a big pickle,” says Miss Lydia with satisfaction. “Oh, look, Mama wants me to go and talk to Reverend Verringer. I would rather talk to you — he is so pedagogical. She thinks he is good for my moral improvement.”

Reverend Verringer has indeed just come into the room, and is smiling at Simon with annoying benevolence, as if Simon is his protégé. Or perhaps he is smiling at Lydia.

Simon watches Lydia as she glides across the room; she has that oiled walk they cultivate. Left to himself on the settee, he finds himself thinking of Grace, as he sees her every weekday, seated opposite him in the sewing room. In her portrait she looks older than she was, but now she looks younger. Her complexion is pale, the skin smooth and unwrinkled and remarkably fine in texture, perhaps because she’s been kept indoors; or it may be the sparse prison diet. She’s thinner now, less full in the face; and whereas the picture shows a pretty woman, she is now more than pretty. Or other than pretty. The line of her cheek has a marble, a classic, simplicity; to look at her is to believe that suffering does indeed purify.

But in the closeness of the sewing room, Simon can smell her as well as look at her. He tries to pay no attention, but her scent is a distracting undercurrent. She smells like smoke; smoke, and laundry soap, and the salt from her skin; and she smells of the skin itself, with its undertone of dampness, fullness, ripeness — what? Ferns and mushrooms; fruits crushed and fermenting. He wonders how often the female prisoners are allowed to bathe. Although her hair is braided and coiled up under her cap, it too gives off an odour, a strong musky odour of scalp. He is in the presence of a female animal; something fox-like and alert. He senses an answering alertness along his own skin, a sensation as of bristles lifting.

Sometimes he feels as if he’s walking on quicksand.

Every day he has set some small object in front of her, and has asked her to tell him what it causes her to imagine. This week he’s attempted various root vegetables, hoping for a connection that will lead downwards: Beet — Root Cellar — Corpses, for instance; or even Turnip — Underground — Grave.

According to his theories, the right object ought to evoke a chain of disturbing associations in her; although so far she’s treated his offerings simply at their face value, and all he’s got out of her has been a series of cookery methods.

On Friday he tried a more direct approach. “You may be perfectly frank with me, Grace,” he had said.

“You need hold nothing back.”

“I have no reason not to be frank with you, Sir,” she said. “A lady might conceal things, as she has her reputation to lose; but I am beyond that.”

“What do you mean, Grace?” he said.

“Only, I was never a lady, Sir, and I’ve already lost whatever reputation I ever had. I can say anything I like; or if I don’t wish to, I needn’t say anything at all.”

“You don’t care about my good opinion of you, Grace?”

She gave him a quick sharp look, then continued her stitching. “I have already been judged, Sir.

Whatever you may think of me, it’s all the same.”

“Judged rightly, Grace?” He could not resist asking.

“Rightly or wrongly does not matter,” she said. “People want a guilty person. If there has been a crime, they want to know who did it. They don’t like not knowing.”

“Then you have given up hope?”

“Hope of what, Sir?” she asked mildly.

Simon felt foolish, as if he’d committed a breach of etiquette. “Well — hope of being set free.”

“Now why would they want to do that, Sir?” she said. “A murderess is not an everyday thing. As for my hopes, I save that for smaller matters. I live in hopes of having a better breakfast tomorrow than I had today.” She smiled a little. “They said at the time that they were making an example of me. That’s why it was the death sentence, and then the life sentence.”

But what does an example do, afterwards? thought Simon. Her story is over. The main story, that is; the thing that has defined her. How is she supposed to fill in the rest of the time? “Do you not feel you have been treated unjustly?” he said.

“I don’t know what you mean, Sir.” She was threading the needle now; she wet the end of the thread in her mouth, to make it easier, and this gesture seemed to him all at once both completely natural and unbearably intimate. He felt as if he was watching her undress, through a chink in the wall; as if she was washing herself with her tongue, like a cat.

Five - Broken Dishes

Chapter 12

This is the ninth day I have sat with Dr. Jordan in this room. The days haven’t been all in a row, as there are the Sundays, and on some other days he did not come. I used to count from my birthdays, and then I counted from my first day in this country, and then from Mary Whitney’s last day on earth, and after that from the day in July when the worst things happened, and after that I counted from my first day in prison.

But now I am counting from the first day I spent in the sewing room with Dr. Jordan, because you can’t always count from the same thing, it gets too tedious and the time stretches out longer and longer, and you can scarcely bear it.

Dr. Jordan sits across from me. He smells of shaving soap, the English kind, and of ears; and of the leather of his boots. It is a reassuring smell and I always look forward to it, men that wash being preferable in this respect to those that do not. What he has put on the table today is a potato, but he has not yet asked me about it, so it is just sitting there between us. I don’t know what he expects me to say about it, except that I have peeled a good many of them in my time, and eaten them too, a fresh new potato is a joy with a little butter and salt, and parsley if available, and even the big old ones can bake up very beautiful; but they are nothing to have a long conversation about. Some potatoes look like babies’

faces, or else like animals, and I once saw one that looked like a cat. But this one looks just like a potato, no more and no less. Sometimes I think that Dr. Jordan is a little off in the head. But I would rather talk with him about potatoes, if that is what he fancies, than not talk to him at all.

He has a different cravat on today, it is red with blue spots or blue with red spots, a little bit loud for my taste but I cannot look at him steady enough to tell. I need the scissors and so I ask for them, and then he wants me to begin talking, so I say, Today I will finish the last block for this quilt, after this the blocks will all be sewn together and it will be quilted, it is meant for one of the Governor’s young ladies. It is a Log Cabin.

A Log Cabin quilt is a thing every young woman should have before marriage, as it means the home; and there is always a red square at the centre, which means the hearth fire. Mary Whitney told me that. But I don’t say this, as I don’t think it will interest him, being too common. Though no more common than a potato.

And he says, What will you sew after this? And I say, I don’t know, I suppose I will be told, they don’t use me for the quilting, only for the blocks because it is such fine work, and the Governor’s wife said I was thrown away on the plain sewing such as they do at the Penitentiary, the postbags and uniforms and so forth; but in any case the quilting is in the evening, and it is a party, and I am not invited to parties.

And he says, If you could make a quilt all for yourself, which pattern would you make?

Well there is no doubt about that, I know the answer. It would be a Tree of Paradise like the one in the quilt chest at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s, I used to get it out on the pretence of seeing if it needed mending, just to admire it, it was a lovely thing, made all of triangles, dark for the leaves and light for the apples, the work very fine, the stitches almost as small as I can do myself, only on mine I would make the border different. Hers is a Wild Goose Chase border, but mine would be an intertwined border, one light colour, one dark, the vine border they call it, vines twisted together like the vines on the mirror in the parlour. It would be a great deal of work and would take a long time, but if it were mine and just for me to have, I would be willing to do it.

But what I say to him is different. I say, I don’t know, Sir. Perhaps it would be a Job’s Tears, or a Tree of Paradise, or a Snake Fence; or else an Old Maid’s Puzzle, because I am an old maid, wouldn’t you say, Sir, and I have certainly been very puzzled. I said this last thing to be mischievous. I did not give him a straight answer, because saying what you really want out loud brings bad luck, and then the good thing will never happen. It might not happen anyway, but just to make sure, you should be careful about saying what you want or even wanting anything, as you may be punished for it. This is what happened to Mary Whitney.

He writes down the names of the quilts. He says, Trees of Paradise, or Tree?

Tree, Sir, I say. You can have a quilt with more than one of them on it, I have seen four with their tops pointed into the middle, but it is still called Tree.

Why is that, do you suppose, Grace? he says. Sometimes he is like a child, he is always asking why.

Because that is the name of the pattern, Sir, I say. There is also the Tree of Life, but that is a different pattern. You can also have a Tree of Temptation, and there is the Pine Tree, that is very nice as well.

He writes that down. Then he picks up the potato and looks at it. He says, Is it not wonderful that such a thing grows under the ground, you might say it is growing in its sleep, out of sight in the darkness, hidden from view.

Well, I don’t know where he expects a potato to grow, I have never seen them dangling about on the bushes. I say nothing, and he says, What else is underground, Grace?

There would be the beets, I say. And the carrots are the same way, Sir, I say. It is their nature.

He seems disappointed in this answer, and does not write it down. He looks at me and thinks. Then he says, Have you had any dreams, Grace?

And I say, What do you mean, Sir?