Authors: Margaret Atwood
The angels also, he reminds himself. Also the angels.
In the distance he sees a woman walking. She’s dressed in black; her skirt is a soft rippling bell, her veil blows out behind her like dark smoke. She turns, looks back briefly: it’s Mrs. Humphrey, his sombre landlady. Fortunately she’s walking away from him; or she may be deliberately avoiding him. Just as well, as he is not in the mood for
conversation, and especially not for gratitude. He wonders why she insists on dressing quite so much like a widow. Wishful thinking, perhaps. So far there’s been no news of the Major. Simon paces along the shore, picturing to himself what the Major must be doing – a racecourse, a bawdy-house, a tavern; one of the three.
Then he thinks, inconsequentially, about taking off his shoes and wading into the lake. He has a sudden memory of dabbling in the creek at the back of the property, as a young boy, in the company of his nursemaid – one of the young millhands turned servant, as were most of their maids then – and getting himself dirty, and being scolded by his mother, and the nursemaid too, for allowing it.
What was her name? Alice? Or was that later, when he was already at school, and in long trousers, and had gone up to the attic on one of his furtive escapades, and had been caught by the girl in her room? White-handed, as it were – he’d been fondling one of her shifts. She’d been angry with him, but couldn’t express her anger, of course, as she’d wanted to keep her position; so she’d done the womanly thing, and burst into tears. He’d put his arms around her to console her, and they’d ended by kissing. Her cap had fallen off, and her hair came tumbling down; long dark-blonde hair, voluptuous, none too clean, smelling of curdled milk. Her hands were red, as she’d been hulling strawberries; and her mouth tasted of them.
There were red smears afterwards, on his shirt, from where she’d started to undo his buttons; but it was the first time he’d ever kissed a woman, and he’d been embarrassed, and then alarmed, and hadn’t known what to do next. Probably she’d laughed at him.
What a raw boy he’d been then; what a simpleton. He smiles at the memory. It’s a picture of more innocent days, and by the time the half-hour is up he feels much better.
Reverend Verringer’s housekeeper greets him with a disapproving nod. If she were to smile, her face would crack like an eggshell.
There must be a school for ugliness, thinks Simon, where such women are sent to be trained. She shows him into the library, where a fire has been lit and two glasses of some unknown cordial set ready. What he would really like is a good stiff whisky, but there’s no hope of that among the teetotalling Methodists.
Reverend Verringer has been standing among his leather bindings, but moves forward to welcome Simon. They sit and sip; the brew in the glass tastes like waterweed, with an undertone of raspberry beetles. “It is purifying to the blood. My housekeeper makes it herself, from an old recipe,” says Reverend Verringer. Very old, thinks Simon; witches come to mind.
“Has there been any progress with – our mutual project?” asks Verringer.
Simon has known this question would be asked; nevertheless, he stumbles a little over the answer. “I have been proceeding with the utmost caution,” he says. “Certainly there are several threads that are worth pursuing. I first needed to establish the grounds for trust, which I believe I have done. After that, I have sought to elicit a family history. Our subject appears to remember her life before arriving at Mr. Kinnear’s, with a vividness, and a mass of circumstantial detail, that indicates the problem is not with her memory in general. I have learned about her journey to this country, and also the first year of her domestic service, which was not marked by any untoward episodes, with one exception.”
“Which was?” asks Reverend Verringer, lifting his sparse eyebrows.
“Are you acquainted with a family called Parkinson, in Toronto?”
“I seem to remember them,” says Verringer, “from my youth. He was an Alderman, as I recall. But he died some years ago; and the widow, I believe, returned to her native land. She was an American, like yourself. She found the winters too cold.”
“That is unfortunate,” says Simon. “I had hoped to speak with them, in order to corroborate certain supposed facts. Grace’s first
situation was with this family. She had a friend – a fellow-servant there – called Mary Whitney; which was, you may recall, the false name she herself gave, when escaping to the United States, with her – with James McDermott; if indeed it was an escape, and not a forced emigration of sorts. In any case this young woman died, under what I must term abrupt circumstances; and while sitting in the room with the body, our subject thought she heard her dead friend speak to her. An auditory hallucination, of course.”
“It is not at all uncommon,” says Verringer. “I myself have attended a great many deathbeds, and especially among the sentimental and the superstitious, it is counted a mark of dishonour
not
to have heard the deceased speak. If an angel choir is also audible, so much the better.” His tone is dry, and possibly even ironic.
Simon is a little surprised: surely it is the duty of the clergy to encourage pious eyewash. “This was followed,” he continues, “by an episode of fainting, and then by hysterics, mixed with what would appear to have been somnambulism; after which there was a deep and prolonged sleep, and subsequent amnesia.”
“Ah,” says Verringer, leaning forward. “So she has a history of such lapses!”
“We must not leap to conclusions,” Simon says judiciously. “She herself is at present my only informant.” He pauses; he does not wish to appear lacking in tact. “It would be exceedingly useful to me, in the formation of my professional opinion, if I were able to speak with those who knew Grace at the time of the – of the events in question, and who afterwards witnessed her comportment and behaviour in the Penitentiary, during the first years of her incarceration, and also in the Asylum.”
“I myself was not present upon those occasions,” says Reverend Verringer.
“I have read Mrs. Moodie’s account,” says Simon. “She has a great deal to say that interests me. According to her, Kenneth MacKenzie,
the lawyer, visited Grace in the Penitentiary some six or seven years after she was imprisoned, and was told by Grace that Nancy Montgomery was haunting her – that her two bloodshot and blazing eyes were following her around, and appearing in such locations as her lap and her soup plate. Mrs. Moodie herself saw Grace in the Asylum – the violent ward, I believe – and portrays a gibbering madwoman, shrieking like a phantom and running about like a singed monkey. Of course, her account was written before she could know that in less than a year Grace would be discharged from the Asylum as, if not perfectly sane, then sane enough to be returned to the Penitentiary.”
“One does not have to be entirely sane for that,” says Verringer, with a short laugh like a hinge creaking.
“I have thought of paying a visit to Mrs. Moodie,” says Simon. “But I seek your advice. I am not sure how to question her, without casting aspersions on the veracity of what she has set down.”
“Veracity?” says Verringer blandly. He doesn’t sound surprised.
“There are discrepancies that are beyond dispute,” says Simon. “For instance, Mrs. Moodie is unclear about the location of Richmond Hill, she is inaccurate on the subject of names and dates, she calls several of the actors in this tragedy by names that are not their own, and she has conferred a military rank on Mr. Kinnear that he appears not to have merited.”
“A post-mortem medal, perhaps,” Verringer murmurs.
Simon smiles. “Also, she has the culprits cutting Nancy Montgomery’s body up into quarters before hiding it under the washtub, which surely was not done. The newspapers would hardly have failed to mention a detail so sensational. I am afraid the good woman did not realize how difficult it is to cut up a body, never having done so herself. It makes one wonder, in short, about other things. The motive for the murders, for example – she puts it down to wild jealousy on the part of Grace, who envied Nancy her
possession of Mr. Kinnear, and lechery on the part of McDermott, who was promised a quid pro quo for his services as butcher, in the form of Grace’s favours.”
“That was the popular view at the time.”
“No doubt,” says Simon. “The public will always prefer a salacious melodrama to a bald tale of mere thievery. But you can see that one might have one’s reservations also about the bloodshot eyes.”
“Mrs. Moodie,” says Reverend Verringer, “has stated publicly that she is very fond of Charles Dickens, and in especial of
Oliver Twist
. I seem to recall a similar pair of eyes in that work, also belonging to a dead female called Nancy. How shall I put it? Mrs. Moodie is subject to influences. You might like to read Mrs. Moodie’s poem ‘The Maniac,’ if you are an aficionado of Sir Walter Scott. Her poem contains all the requirements – a cliff, a moon, a raging sea, a betrayed maiden chanting a wild melody and clad in unhealthily damp garments, with – as I recall – her streaming hair festooned with botanical specimens. I believe she ends by leaping off the picturesque cliff so thoughtfully provided for her. Let me see –” And closing his eyes, and beating time with his right hand, he recites:
“ ‘The wind wav’d her garments, and April’s rash showers
Hung like gems in her dark locks, enwreath’d with wild flowers;
Her bosom was bared to the cold midnight storm,
That unsparingly beat on her thin fragile form;
Her black eyes flash’d sternly whence reason had fled,
And she glanc’d on my sight like some ghost of the dead,
As she sang a loud strain to the hoarse dashing surge,
That rang on my ears like the plaint of a dirge.
“And he who had left her to madness and shame,
Who had robb’d her of honour, and blasted her fame –
Did he think in that hour of the heart he had riven,
The vows he had broken, the anguish he’d given?
And where was the infant whose birth gave the blow
To the peace of his mother, and madden’d her woe? …’ ”
He opens his eyes again. “Where indeed?” he says.
“You astonish me,” says Simon. “You must have an extraordinary memory.”
“For verse of a certain type, unfortunately yes; it comes from too much hymn-singing,” says Reverend Verringer. “Though God himself chose to write a good deal of the Bible in poetry, which demonstrates his approval of the form as such, however indifferently it may be practised. Nevertheless, one cannot quibble with Mrs. Moodie’s morals. But I am sure you take my meaning. Mrs. Moodie is a literary lady, and like all such, and indeed like the sex in general, she is inclined to –”
“Embroider,” says Simon.
“Precisely,” says Reverend Verringer. “Everything I say here is strictly confidential, of course. Although Tories at the time of the Rebellion, the Moodies have since seen the error of their ways, and are now staunchly Reform; for which they have been made to suffer, by certain malicious persons who are in a position to torment them with lawsuits and the like. I would not say a word against the lady. But I would also not advise a visit. I understand, by the by, that the Spiritualists have got hold of her.”
“Indeed?” says Simon.
“So I hear. She was for a long time a sceptic, and her husband was the first convert of the two. No doubt she became tired of spending the evenings alone, while he was off listening to phantom trumpets, and conversing with the spirits of Goethe and Shakespeare.”
“I take it you do not approve.”
“Ministers of my denomination have been expelled from the Church for dabbling in these, to my mind, unholy proceedings,”
says Reverend Verringer. “It is true that some members of our Committee have partaken; are devotees, in fact; but I must bear with them, until this madness has run its course and they have come to their senses. As Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne has said, the thing is a humbug, and if it is not, so much the worse for us; for the spirits who present themselves at table-turnings and the like, must be those who have failed to get into the eternal world, and are still cluttering up ours, like a kind of spiritual dust. It is unlikely that they wish us well, and the less we have to say to them the better.”
“Hawthorne?” says Simon. He is surprised to find a clergyman reading Hawthorne: the man has been accused of sensualism, and – especially after
The Scarlet Letter –
of a laxity in morals.
“One must keep up with one’s flock. But as to Grace Marks and her earlier behaviour, you would be better to consult Mr. Kenneth MacKenzie, who acted for her at the trial, and who, I understand, has a sound head on his shoulders. He is currently a partner in a Toronto law firm, having made a rapid professional rise. I shall address a letter of introduction to him; I am sure he will accommodate you.”
“Thank you,” says Simon.
“I am pleased to have had this chance to talk with you in private, before the advent of the ladies. But I hear them arriving now.”
“The ladies?” says Simon.
“The Governor’s wife and her daughters are favouring us with their company this evening,” says Verringer. “The Governor himself is unfortunately away on business. Did I not inform you?” Two spots of colour appear, one on each of his pale cheeks. “Let us go to welcome them, shall we?”
Only one daughter is present. Marianne, says her mother, has been kept to her bed with a cold. Simon is alerted: he is familiar with such ruses, he knows the cabals of mothers. The Governor’s wife has decided to give Lydia an unimpeded shot at him, without any
distraction from Marianne. Perhaps he should reveal the smallness of his income immediately, so as to forestall her. But Lydia is a confection, and he doesn’t wish to deprive himself of such an aesthetic pleasure too soon. As long as no declarations are made, no harm will be done; and he enjoys being gazed at by eyes as luminous as hers.
The season has now officially changed: Lydia has burst into spring bloom. Layers of pale floral ruffling have sprouted all over her, and wave from her shoulders like diaphanous wings. Simon eats his fish – overdone, but no one on this continent can poach a fish properly – and admires the smooth white contours of her throat, and what can be seen of her bosom. It’s as if she is sculpted of whipped cream. She should be on the platter, instead of the fish. He’s heard stories of a famous Parisian courtesan who had herself presented at a banquet in this way; naked, of course. He occupies himself with undressing and then garnishing Lydia: she should be garlanded with flowers – ivory-coloured, shell pink – and with perhaps a border of hothouse grapes and peaches.