Alias Grace (51 page)

Simon coughs, to hide his rage. How could he not have noticed that the man had a mouth like a depraved old lecher’s? A provincial brothel-trotter. A calculating voluptuary. “There has never been any suggestion of that,” he says. “In my case.” He’s considered the daydreams to be all on his side, but already he’s beginning to doubt it. What has Grace really been thinking about him, as she sewed and recounted?

“I was very lucky,” says MacKenzie, “and so of course was Grace herself, that the murder of Mr. Kinnear was tried before the other. It was obvious to everyone that she couldn’t have helped to shoot Kinnear; and for Nancy’s murder – indeed, for both of them – the evidence was circumstantial only. She was convicted not as a principal, but as an accessory, as all that could be proven against her was that she’d known of McDermott’s murderous intentions in advance, and had failed to inform against him; and that she similarly neglected to broadcast the news of his completed achievement. Even the Chief Justice recommended clemency, and with the aid of several strong petitions in her favour I was able to save her life. By that time the death sentence had been pronounced against both of them and the trial had been closed, since it was thought unnecessary to go into the details of the second case; so Grace was never tried for the murder of Nancy Montgomery.”

“And if she had been?” asks Simon.

“I couldn’t have got her off. Public opinion would have been too strong for me. She would have been hanged.”

“But in your opinion, she was innocent,” says Simon.

“On the contrary,” says MacKenzie. He sips at his sherry, wipes his lips daintily, smiles a smile of gentle reminiscence. “No. In my opinion, she was guilty as sin.”

W
hat is Dr. Jordan doing and when will he come back? Though what he is doing I think I have guessed. He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won’t find it out that way. He doesn’t understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you’ve done, but from the things that others have done to you.

His first name is Simon. I wonder why his mother named him that, or it may have been his father. My own father never bothered with the naming of us, it was up to Mother and Aunt Pauline. There is Simon Peter the Apostle, of course, who was made a fisher of men by our Lord. But there is also Simple Simon. Met a pie man, going to the fair. And said, Let me taste your ware, and had no penny. McDermott was like that, he thought he could take things without paying for them; and so does Dr. Jordan. Not that I don’t feel sorry for him. He was always thin, and it’s my impression that he is getting even thinner. I believe he is a prey to some gnawing sorrow.

As for what I was named after, it might have been the hymn. My mother never said so, but then there were many things she never said.

I hope I was named after it. I would like to be found. I would like to see. Or to be seen. I wonder if, in the eye of God, it amounts to the same thing. As it says in the Bible,
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face
.

If it is face to face, there must be two looking.

Today was Bath Day. There is some talk of making us bathe naked, in groups, instead of by two’s in our shifts; they say it will save time and be more economical, as less water need be used, but I think it an immodest idea and if they attempt it I shall complain to the authorities. Although perhaps I won’t, as these things are sent to try us and I should put up with it without complaint, as I do all the rest, for the most part. The baths are unpleasant enough already, the stone of the floor all slippery with dirty old soap, like a jelly, and there’s always a Matron watching; which may be just as well, as otherwise there would be splashing. In winter you freeze to death, but now in the heat of the summer with all the sweat and grime, which is twice as much after working in the kitchens, I don’t mind the cold water so much, as it is refreshing.

After the baths had been got through I spent time at the plain sewing. They are behindhand at the prison with the men’s uniforms, as more and more criminals keep being admitted, especially in the dog days of summer when tempers are short and folks run to vindictiveness; and so they must use my extra pair of hands. They have their orders and their quotas to fill, just as in a factory.

Annie Little was sitting next to me on the bench, and she leant
close and whispered to me, Grace, Grace, is he handsome, your young doctor? Will he get you out of prison? Are you in love with him, I suppose you are.

Don’t be silly, I whispered to her, talking such rubbish, I’ve never been in love with any man and I don’t plan to start now. I am condemned for life and there is no time for that sort of thing in here, and no space for it either when it comes to that.

Annie is thirty-five, she’s older than I am, but besides being not always right in the head she has never grown up. That happens in the Penitentiary, some of them stay the same age all the time inside themselves; the same age as when first put in.

Get off your high horse, she said, and dug me with her elbow. You wouldn’t mind a stiff piece in a tight corner, it never comes amiss; and you are so sly, she whispered, you’d find a time and a place for it if you wanted, Bertha Flood did it with a keeper in the tool shed, only she got caught and you’d never, you’ve got such a steady hand, you could murder your own grannie in her bed and never turn a hair. And she gave a snorting laugh.

I fear she has led a most disreputable life.

Silence there, said the Matron on duty, or I’ll take down your names. They’re becoming stricter again, as there is a new Head Matron; and if there are too many marks against you they cut off your hair.

After the noon meal I was sent over to the Governor’s house. Dora was there again, as she has an arrangement with Dr. Jordan’s landlady that she may come to us on the days of the great washing; and as usual she was full of gossip. She said if she told half she knew, it would take someone down a peg or two, and there was many a whited sepulchre wearing black silk and carrying lace handkerchiefs, and having sick headaches in the afternoons as if thoroughly
respectable; and others could suit themselves, but she is not one to have the wool pulled over her eyes. She said that since Dr. Jordan went away, her mistress was spending hours in pacing the floor, and looking out the window, or sitting as if sunk into a stupor; which was no wonder, as she must be fearing he’ll run off on her, as did the other one. And then who would pay for her whims and whams, and for all the running and fetching she required?

Clarrie for the most part ignores what Dora has to say. She is not interested in gossip about the better classes; she only smokes her pipe, and says, H’m. But today she said why should she care what the likes of those get up to, you might as well watch the hens and roosters scuffling in the barnyard, and God put such folks on this earth to dirty up the laundry as far as she could tell, because she couldn’t for the life of her see any other use for them. And Dora said, Well, they are doing a fine job of that, I must say, they dirty it up as fast as I can get it clean, and the both of them are in the dirtying of it together if the truth was to come out.

At that a chill ran over my whole body, and I did not ask her to explain herself. I didn’t want her saying anything bad about Dr. Jordan, as on the whole he has been very kind to me, and is also a considerable diversion in my life of monotony and toil.

When Dr. Jordan comes back, I am to be hypnotized. It has all been decided; Jeremiah, or I should think of him as Dr. DuPont because that is what I must now remember to call him, is to do the hypnotizing, and the others will watch and listen. The Governor’s wife has explained it all, and said I need not be afraid, as I will be among friends who mean well, and all I will have to do is sit in a chair and go to sleep when Dr. DuPont tells me to. When I am asleep they will ask me questions. In this way they hope to bring back my memory.

I told her I was not at all sure I wanted to have it back, although of course I would do as they wished. And she said she was glad to
find me in a co-operative state of mind, and she had the greatest faith in me and was sure I would be found innocent.

After the evening meal Matron gave us some knitting, to take into our cells and finish after hours, as they are behind on the stockings. In the summer it is light until quite late, and no candle grease need be wasted on us.

So now I am knitting. I am a quick knitter, I can do it without looking as long as it is only stockings and nothing fancy. And as I knit, I think: What would I put into my Keepsake Album, if I had one? A bit of fringe, from my mother’s shawl. A ravelling of red wool, from the flowered mittens that Mary Whitney made for me. A scrap of silk, from Nancy’s good shawl. A bone button, from Jeremiah. A daisy, from the daisy chain made for me by Jamie Walsh.

Nothing from McDermott, as I don’t wish to remember him.

But what should a Keepsake Album be? Should it be only the good things in your life, or should it be all of the things? Many put in pictures of scenes and events they have never witnessed, such as Dukes and Niagara Falls, which to my mind is a sort of cheating. Would I do that? Or would I be truthful to my own life.

A piece of coarse cotton, from my Penitentiary nightdress. A square of bloodstained petticoat. A strip of kerchief, white with blue flowers. Love-in-a-mist.

T
he next morning, just after sunrise, Simon sets out for Richmond Hill, on a horse which he’s hired at the livery stable behind his hotel. Like all horses accustomed to a succession of strange riders the beast is obstinate, with a hard mouth, and tries twice to scrape him against fences. After that it settles down, and plods along at a dogged canter, varied by a brisk, jolting walk. Although dusty and rutted in places the road is better than Simon has expected, and with several stops at wayside inns for rest and water he reaches Richmond Hill shortly after noon.

It’s still not much of a town. There’s a general store, a blacksmith’s, a straggle of houses. The inn must be the same one Grace remembers. He goes into it, orders roast beef and beer, and enquires about the location of Mr. Kinnear’s former house. The landlord isn’t surprised: Simon is by no means the first to ask such a question. In fact, they were fairly swarmed back then, he says, at the time of the murders, and ever since there’s been a steady trickle of sightseers. The town is tired of being known only for that one thing: let the
dead bury the dead, to his mind. But then, people want to gawk at tragedy; it’s indecent. You’d think they’d leave trouble alone – but no, they want to partake of it. Some go so far as to carry things away with them – pebbles from the driveway, flowers from the flower beds. The gentleman who owns the house now is not so bothered, as fewer people have been coming. Still, he doesn’t want idle curiosity.

Simon assures him that his own curiosity is far from idle: he’s a doctor, and is making a study of Grace. It’s a waste of time, says the landlord, because Grace was guilty. “She was a good-looking woman,” he adds, with a kind of pride at having known her. “Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. You’d never have guessed what she was plotting, under that smooth face.”

“Only fifteen at the time, I believe,” says Simon.

“But could have passed for eighteen. A shame, to have got so wicked, at her young age.” He says Mr. Kinnear was a fine gentleman though loose, and most people had liked Nancy Montgomery, even though she’d been living in sin. He’d known McDermott too; a prime athlete, and would have done well in the end, except for Grace. “It was her led him on, and it was her put a noose around his neck for him too.” He says the women always get off easy.

Simon asks about Jamie Walsh, but Jamie Walsh is gone. To the city, say some; to the States, say others. After Kinnear’s place was sold off the Walshes had to shift. In fact there aren’t many left in the neighbourhood who were here back then, as there’s been a great deal of buying and selling and coming and going since; the grass being always greener on the other side of the fence.

Simon rides north, and has little difficulty in identifying the Kinnear property. He hasn’t meant to go right up to the house – he’s only been intending to look at it from a distance – but the orchard which was young in Grace’s time has now grown up, partially obscuring the
view. He finds himself halfway up the drive, and before he knows it he’s hitched his horse to the fence beside the two kitchens, and is standing at the front door.

The house is smaller, and somehow dingier, than he has imagined it. The porch with its pillars is in need of a coat of paint, and the rose bushes have run wild, and show only a few infested blooms. What can be gained from looking, Simon asks himself; apart, that is, from a vulgar frisson, and the indulgence of morbid interest? It’s like visiting the site of a battle: there is nothing to be seen except in the mind’s eye. Such confrontations with the actual are always a disappointment.

Nevertheless he knocks at the front door, then knocks again. No one answers. He’s turning to go away when the door is opened. A woman stands there, thin, sad-faced, not old but aging, soberly dressed in a dark print dress and apron. Simon has the sensation that this is what Nancy Montgomery would have turned into if she’d lived.

“You’re here to see the house,” she says. It isn’t a question. “The master’s not at home, but I have instructions to show you around.”

Simon is taken aback: how did they know he was coming? Perhaps they have a lot of visitors, still, despite what the innkeeper told him? Has the place become a grisly museum?

The housekeeper – for that’s what she must be – stands aside to allow Simon to pass into the front hall. “You’ll want to know about the well, I suppose,” she says. “They always do.”

“The well?” asks Simon. He’s heard nothing about a well. Perhaps his visit will be repaid, after all, with some fresh detail about the case, never before mentioned. “What about the well?”