Authors: Margaret Atwood
I take my meals — with the exception of the breakfasts, which have thus far been even more
deplorable than the breakfasts we shared as medical students in London — at a squalid inn
located in the vicinity, where every meal is a burnt offering, and nothing is thought the worse for
the addition of a little dirt and grime, and a seasoning of insects. That I remain here despite these
travesties of the culinary art, I trust you will recognize as a measure of my true devotion to the
cause of science.
As for society, I must report that there are pretty girls here as elsewhere, albeit dressed in the
Paris fashions of three years ago, which is to say the New York fashions of two. Despite the
reforming tendencies of the country’s present government, the town abounds both in disgruntled
Tories, and also in petty provincial snobberies; and I anticipate that your bearish and carelessly
dressed, and what is more to the purpose, your Yankee democrat friend, will be viewed with some
suspicion by its more partisan inhabitants.
Nonetheless, the Governor — art the urging of Reverend Verringer, I suppose — has gone out of
his way to be accommodating, and has arranged to have Grace Marks placed at my disposal for
several hours every afternoon. She appears to act in the household as a sort of unpaid servant,
though whether this service is viewed by her as a favour or a penance, I have yet to ascertain; nor
will it be an easy task, as the gentle Grace, having been hardened in the fire now for some fifteen
years, will be a very hard nut to crack. Enquiries such as mine are ineffective, unless the trust of
the subject may be gained; but judging from my knowledge of penal institutions, I suspect Grace
has had scant reason to trust anyone at all for a very long period of time.
I have had only one opportunity thus far of viewing the object of my investigations, and so it is
too soon to convey my impressions. Let me say only that I am hopeful; and, as you have so kindly
expressed a desire to have news of my progress, I will take pains to keep you informed of it; and
until then, I remain, my dear Edward,
Your old friend and erstwhile companion,
Simon.
Chapter 7
Simon sits at his writing table, gnawing the end of his pen and looking out the window at the grey and choppy waters of Lake Ontario. Across the bay is Wolfe Island, named after the famous poetic general, he supposes. It’s a view he does not admire — it is so relentlessly horizontal — but visual monotony can sometimes be conducive to thought.
A gust of rain patters against the windowpane; low tattered clouds are scudding above the lake. The lake itself heaves and surges; waves are pulled in against the shore, recoil, are pulled in again; and the willow trees below him toss themselves like heads of long green hair, and bend and thrash. Something pale blows past: it looks like a woman’s white scarf or veil, but then he sees it is only a gull, fighting the wind.
The mindless turmoil of Nature, he thinks; Tennyson’s teeth and claws.
He feels none of the jaunty hopefulness he has just expressed. Instead he is uneasy, and more than a little dispirited. His reason for being here seems precarious; but it’s his best chance at the moment. When he entered upon his medical studies, it was out of a young man’s perversity. His father was a wealthy mill owner then, and fully expected Simon to take over the business in time; and Simon himself expected the same thing. First, however, he would rebel a little; he would slip the traces, travel, study, test himself in the world, and also in the world of science and medicine, which had always appealed to him. Then he would return home with a hobby-horse to ride, and the comfortable assurance that he need not ride it for money. Most of the best scientists, he knows, have private incomes, which allows them the possibility of disinterested research.
He hadn’t expected the collapse of his father, and also of his father’s textile mills — which came first he’s never been sure. Instead of an amusing row down a quiet stream, he’s been overtaken by a catastrophe at sea, and has been left clinging to a broken spar. In other words he has been thrown back on his own resources; which was what, during his adolescent arguments with his father, he claimed to most desire.
The mills were sold, and the imposing house of his childhood, with its large staff of domestics — the chambermaids, the kitchen maids, the parlour maids, that ever-changing chorus of smiling girls or women with names like Alice and Effie, who cosseted and also dominated his childhood and youth, and whom he thinks of as having somehow been sold along with the house. They smelled like strawberries and salt; they had long rippling hair, when it was down, or one of them did; it was Effie, perhaps. As for his inheritance, it’s smaller than his mother thinks, and much of the income from it goes to her. She sees herself as living in reduced circumstances, which is true, considering what they have been reduced from.
She believes she is making sacrifices for Simon, and he doesn’t want to disillusion her. His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.
Thus the private asylum is far beyond his reach at present. In order to raise the money for it he would have to be able to offer something novel, some new discovery or cure, in a field that is already crowded and also very contentious. Perhaps, when he has established his name, he will be able to sell shares in it.
But without losing control: he must be free, absolutely free, to follow his own methods, once he has decided exactly what they are to be. He will write a prospectus: large and cheerful rooms, proper ventilation and drainage, and extensive grounds, with a river flowing through them, as the sound of water is soothing to the nerves. He’ll draw the line at machinery and fads, however: no electrical devices, nothing with magnets. It’s true that the American public is unduly impressed by such notions — they favour cures that can be had by pulling a lever or pressing a button — but Simon has no belief in their efficacy. Despite the temptation, he must refuse to compromise his integrity.
It’s all a pipe dream at present. But he has to have a project of some sort, to wave in front of his mother.
She needs to believe that he’s working towards some goal or other, however much she may disapprove of it. Of course he could always marry money, as she herself did. She traded her family name and connections for a heap of coin fresh from the mint, and she is more than willing to arrange something of the sort for him: the horse-trading that’s becoming increasingly common between impoverished European aristocrats and upstart American millionaires is not unknown, on a much smaller scale, in Loomisville, Massachusetts. He thinks of the prominent front teeth and duck-like neck of Miss Faith Cartwright, and shivers.
He consults his watch: his breakfast is late again. He takes it in his rooms, where it arrives every morning, carried in on a wooden tray by Dora, his landlady’s maid-of-all-work. She sets the tray with a thump and a rattle on the small table at the far end of the sitting room, where, once she has gone, he seats himself to devour it, or whatever parts of it he guesses to be edible. He has adopted the habit of writing before breakfast at the other and larger table so he may be seen bent over his work, and will not have to look at her.
Dora is stout and pudding-faced, with a small downturned mouth like that of a disappointed baby. Her large black eyebrows meet over her nose, giving her a permanent scowl that expresses a sense of disapproving outrage. It’s obvious that she detests being a maid-of-all-work; he wonders if there is anything else she might prefer. He has tried imagining her as a prostitute — he often plays this private mental game with various women he encounters — but he can’t picture any man actually paying for her services. It would be like paying to be run over by a wagon, and would be, like that experience, a distinct threat to the health. Dora is a hefty creature, and could snap a man’s spine in two with her thighs, which Simon envisions as greyish, like boiled sausages, and stubbled like a singed turkey; and enormous, each one as large as a piglet.
Dora returns his lack of esteem. She appears to feel that he has rented these rooms with the sole object of causing trouble for her. She fricassees his handkerchiefs and overstarches his shirts, and loses the buttons from them, which she no doubt pulls off routinely. He’s even suspected her of burning his toast and overcooking his egg on purpose. After plumping down his tray, she bellows, “Here’s your food,” as if calling a hog; then she stumps out, closing the door behind her just one note short of a slam.
Simon has been spoiled by European servants, who are born knowing their places; he has not yet reaccustomed himself to the resentful demonstrations of equality so frequently practised on this side of the ocean. Except in the South, of course; but he does not go there.
There are better lodgings than these to be had in Kingston, but he doesn’t wish to pay for them. These are suitable enough for the short time he intends to stay. Also there are no other lodgers, and he values his privacy, and the quiet in which to think. The house is a stone one, and chilly and damp; but by temperament — it must be the old New Englander in him — Simon feels a certain contempt for material self-indulgence; and as a medical student he became habituated to a monkish austerity, and to working long hours under difficult conditions.
He turns again to his desk.
Dearest Mother,
he begins.
Thank you for your long and informative
letter. I am very well, and making considerable headway here, in my study of nervous and
cerebral diseases among the criminal element, which, if the key to them may be found, would go a
long way towards alleviating…
He can’t go on; he feels too fraudulent. But he has to write something, or she will assume he has drowned, or died suddenly of consumption, or been waylaid by thieves. The weather is always a good subject; but he can’t write about the weather on an empty stomach.
From the drawer of his desk he takes out a small pamphlet that dates from the time of the murders, and which was sent to him by Reverend Verringer. It contains the confessions of Grace Marks and James McDermott, as well as an abridged version of the trial. At the front is an engraved portrait of Grace, which could easily pass for the heroine of a sentimental novel; she’d been just sixteen at the time, but the woman pictured looks a good five years older. Her shoulders are swathed in a tippet; the brim of a bonnet encircles her head like a dark aureole. The nose is straight, the mouth dainty, the expression conventionally soulful — the vapid pensiveness of a Magdalene, with the large eyes gazing at nothing.
Beside this is a matching engraving of James McDermott, shown in the overblown collar of those days, with his hair in a forward-swept arrangement reminiscent of Napoleon’s, and meant to suggest tempestuousness. He is scowling in a brooding, Byronic way; the artist must have admired him.
Beneath the double portrait is written, in copperplate:
Grace Marks, alias Mary Whitney; James
McDermott. As they appeared at the Court House. Accused of Murdering Mr. Thos. Kinnear &
Nancy Montgomery.
The whole thing bears a disturbing resemblance to a wedding invitation; or it would, without the pictures.
Preparing himself for his first interview with Grace, Simon had disregarded this portrait entirely. She must be quite different by now, he’d thought; more dishevelled; less self-contained; more like a suppliant; quite possibly insane. He was conducted to her temporary cell by a keeper, who’d locked him in with her, after warning him that she was stronger than she looked and could give a man a devilish bite, and advising him to call for help if she became violent.
As soon as he saw her, he knew that this wouldn’t happen. The morning light fell slantingly in through the small window high up on the wall, illuminating the corner where she stood. It was an image almost mediaeval in its plain lines, its angular clarity: a nun in a cloister, a maiden in a towered dungeon, awaiting the next day’s burning at the stake, or else the last-minute champion come to rescue her. The cornered woman; the penitential dress falling straight down, concealing feet that were surely bare; the straw mattress on the floor; the timorous hunch of the shoulders; the arms hugged close to the thin body, the long wisps of auburn hair escaping from what appeared at first glance to be a chaplet of white flowers —
especially the eyes, enormous in the pale face and dilated with fear, or with mute pleading — all was as it should be. He’d seen many hysterics at the Salpêtrière in Paris who’d looked very much like this.
He approached her with a calm and smiling face, presenting an image of goodwill — which was a true image, after all, because goodwill was what he felt. It was important to convince such patients that you, at least, did not believe them to be mad, since they never believed it themselves.
But then Grace stepped forward, out of the light, and the woman he’d seen the instant before was suddenly no longer there. Instead there was a different woman — straighter, taller, more self-possessed, wearing the conventional dress of the Penitentiary, with a striped blue and white skirt beneath which were two feet, not naked at all but enclosed in ordinary shoes. There was even less escaped hair than he’d thought: most of it was tucked up under a white cap.
Her eyes were unusually large, it was true, but they were far from insane. Instead they were frankly assessing him. It was as if she were contemplating the subject of some unexplained experiment; as if it were he, and not she, who was under scrutiny.
Remembering the scene, Simon winces. I was indulging myself, he thinks. Imagination and fancy. I must stick to observation, I must proceed with caution. A valid experiment must have verifiable results. I must resist melodrama, and an overheated brain.