Alias Grace (55 page)

Rachel stops moving. Her green eyes open, and look straight into Simon’s. “He doesn’t have to come back,” she says. The irises of her eyes are huge, the pupils mere pinpricks; has she been taking
laudanum again? “He might have an accident. If nobody sees him. He could have an accident, in the house; you could bury him in the garden.” This isn’t impromptu: she must have been making a plan. “We couldn’t stay here, he might be found. We could cross to the States. On the railway train! We’d be together then. They’d never find us!”

Simon puts his mouth on hers, to silence her. She thinks this means he’s consented. “Oh, Simon,” she sighs. “I knew you would never leave me! I love you more than my life!” She kisses his face all over; her movements become epileptic.

It’s another of her scenarios for inducing passion, in herself above all. Resting beside her shortly afterwards, Simon tries to picture what she must have been imagining. It’s like some third-rate shocker, Ainsworth or Bulwer-Lytton at their most bloodthirsty and banal: the Major reeling drunkenly up the front steps, alone, in the dusk, then entering the front hall. Rachel is there: he strikes her, then clutches her cringing form with sottish lust. She shrieks and begs for mercy, he laughs like a fiend. But rescue is at hand: there’s a sharp blow with the spade, on his head, from behind. He falls with a wooden thud and is dragged by the heels down the passageway to the kitchen, where Simon’s leather satchel awaits. A quick incision to the jugular with a surgical knife; blood gurgles into a slop bucket; and all is over. A spate of digging in the moonlight, and into the cabbage patch he goes, with Rachel in a becoming shawl and clutching a dark lantern, and swearing she will be eternally his, after what he’s dared for her sake.

But here is Dora, watching from the kitchen door. She cannot be allowed to escape; Simon chases her around the house, corners her in the scullery, and sticks her like a pig, with Rachel trembling and fainting, but then pulling herself together like a true heroine and coming to his aid. Dora requires more digging, a deeper hole, followed by an orgiastic scene on the kitchen floor.

So much for the midnight burlesque. Then what? Then he’ll be a murderer, with Rachel as the only witness. He’ll be wedded to her; chained to her; melded to her, which is what she wants. He will never be free. But here’s the part she has surely failed to imagine: once they’re in the States, she’ll be incognito. She’ll be without a name. She’ll be an unknown woman, of the kind often found floating in canals or other bodies of water:
Unknown Woman Found Floating In Canal
. Who would suspect him?

What method will he use? In bed, at the moment of delirium, her own hair coiled around her neck, only a slight pressure. That has a definite frisson, and is worthy of the genre.

She’ll have forgotten all about it, in the morning. He turns to her again, arranges her. He strokes her neck.

Sunlight wakens him; he’s still beside her, in her bed. He forgot to return to his own room last night, and no wonder: he was exhausted. From the kitchen he can hear Dora, clattering and thumping. Rachel is lying on her side, propped on one arm, watching him; she’s naked, but has twined herself in the sheet. There’s a bruise on her upper arm, which he can’t remember making.

He sits up. “I must go,” he whispers. “Dora will hear.”

“I don’t care,” she says.

“But your reputation …”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “We’ll only be here for two more days.” Her tone is practical; she regards it as settled, like a business arrangement. It occurs to him – and why for the first time only? – that she may be insane, or verging on it; or a moral degenerate, at the very least.

Simon creeps up the stairs, carrying his shoes and jacket, like a naughty undergraduate returning from a romp. He feels chilled. What he’s viewed as merely a kind of acting, she’s mistaken for reality. She truly thinks that he, Simon, is going to murder her
husband, and out of love for her. What will she do when he refuses? There’s a swirling in his head; the floor under his feet seems unreal, as if it’s about to dissolve.

Before breakfast, he seeks her out. She’s in the front parlour, on the sofa; she rises, greets him with a passionate kiss. Simon detaches himself, and tells her that he’s ill; it’s a recurrent malarial fever, which he contracted in Paris. If they are to fulfil their intentions – he puts it that way, to disarm her – he will have to have the proper medicine for it, at once, or he can’t answer for the consequences.

She feels his forehead, which he’s taken the precaution of dampening with his sponge, upstairs. She’s suitably alarmed, yet there’s an undertone of elation as well: she’s getting ready to nurse him, to indulge herself in yet another role. He can see what’s in her mind: she’ll make beef tea and jellies, she’ll pack him in blankets and mustard, she’ll bandage any part of him that sticks out or looks likely. He will be weakened, he will be enfeebled and helpless, he will be firmly in her possession: that is her goal. He must save himself from her while there’s still time.

He kisses the tips of her fingers. She must help him, he says tenderly. His life depends on her. Into her hand he presses a note, addressed to the Governor’s wife: it requests the name of a doctor, as he knows no one locally. Once she has the name, she must hurry to the doctor and obtain the medicine. He’s written down the prescription, in an illegible scribble; he gives her the money for it. Dora can’t go, he says, as she can’t be trusted to hurry. Time is of the essence: his treatment must begin immediately. She nods, she understands: she will do anything, she tells him fervently.

White-faced and trembling, but with lips set, she puts on her bonnet and hurries away. As soon as she’s out of sight, Simon dries off his face and begins to pack. He sends Dora for a hired carriage, bribing her with a generous tip. While waiting for her return he composes a letter to Rachel, bidding her a polite farewell, pleading
the health of his mother. He doesn’t address her as Rachel. He includes several banknotes, but no terms of endearment. He’s a man of the world, and won’t be trapped that way, or blackmailed either: no Breach of Promise suit for him in case her husband dies. Perhaps she’ll kill the Major herself; she’s more than capable of it.

He thinks of writing a note to Lydia as well, but thinks better of it. It’s a good thing he’s never made a formal declaration.

The carriage arrives – it’s more like a cart – and he hurls his two valises into it. “To the railway station,” he says. Once he’s safely away he will write to Verringer, promising some sort of report, stalling for time. He may after all be able to work up something; something that will not entirely discredit him. But above all he must put this disastrous interlude firmly behind him. After a quick visit to his mother, and a rearrangement of his economies, he will go to Europe. If his mother can manage on less – and she can – he can just barely afford it.

He doesn’t begin to feel safe until he’s in the railway carriage, with the doors firmly shut. The presence of a train conductor, in a uniform, is reassuring to him. Order of a sort is reasserting itself.

Once in Europe, he’ll continue his researches. He will study the many prevailing schools of thought, but he will not add to them; not yet. He has gone to the threshold of the unconscious, and has looked across; or rather he has looked down. He could have fallen. He could have fallen in. He could have drowned.

Better, perhaps, to abandon theories, and concentrate on ways and means. When he returns to America he will bestir himself. He’ll give lectures, he’ll attract subscribers. He’ll build a model Asylum, with well-tended grounds and the very best sanitation and drainage. What Americans prefer above all is the appearance of comfort, in any sort of institution at all. An Asylum with large comfortable rooms, facilities for hydrotherapy, and a good many mechanical devices, could do very well. There must be little wheels that go
around with a whirring sound, there must be rubber suction cups. Wires to attach to the cranium. Apparatus for measuring. He will include the word “electrical” in his prospectus. The main thing must be to keep the patients clean and docile – drugs will be a help – and their relatives admiring and satisfied. As in schools for children, those who must be impressed are not the actual inmates, but those who pay the bills.

All of this will be a compromise. But he has now – very abruptly it seems – reached the right age for it.

The train moves out of the station. There’s a cloud of black smoke, and then a long plaintive wail, which follows him like a baffled phantom along the track.

Not until he’s halfway to Cornwall does he allow himself to consider Grace. Will she think he’s deserted her? Lost faith in her, perhaps? If she is indeed ignorant of last evening’s events, she will be justified in so thinking. She’ll be bewildered by him, as he has been by her.

She can’t know yet that he’s left the city. He pictures her sitting in her accustomed chair, sewing at her quilt; singing, perhaps; waiting for his footfall at the door.

Outside it’s begun to drizzle. After a time the motion of the train lulls him to sleep; he slumps against the wall. Now Grace is coming towards him across a wide lawn in sunshine, all in white, carrying an armful of red flowers: they are so clear he can see the dewdrops on them. Her hair is loose, her feet bare; she’s smiling. Then he sees that what she walks on is not grass but water; and as he reaches to embrace her, she melts away like mist.

He wakes; he’s still on the train, with the grey smoke blowing past the window. He presses his mouth to the glass.