Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

“Here is the execution,” says Miss Lydia. “Of James McDermott. It was in several of the newspapers. This one is The Examiner. ”

Simon reads:

What a morbid appetite for such sights, must exist in society, when so large an assemblage, in the present state of our roads, had collected, to witness the dying agony, of an unfortunate but criminal fellow being!

Can it be supposed that public morals are improved, or the tendency to the commission of flagrant crimes repressed, by such public sights as these.

“I am inclined to agree,” says Simon.

“I would have attended it if I had been there,” says Miss Lydia. “Wouldn’t you?”

Simon is taken aback by such directness. He disapproves of public executions, which are unhealthily exciting and produce bloodthirsty fancies in the weaker-minded part of the population. But he knows himself; and, given the opportunity, his curiosity would have overcome his scruples. “In my professional capacity, perhaps,” he says cautiously. “But I wouldn’t have allowed my sister to attend, supposing I had one.”

Miss Lydia widens her eyes. “But why not?” she says.

“Women should not attend such grisly spectacles,” he says. “They pose a danger to their refined natures.” He’s conscious of sounding pompous.

In the course of his travels, he’s encountered many women who could scarcely be accused of refined natures. He has seen madwomen tearing off their clothes and displaying their naked bodies; he has seen prostitutes of the lowest sort do the same. He’s seen women drunk and swearing, struggling together like wrestlers, pulling the hair from each other’s heads. The streets of Paris and London swarm with them; he’s known them to make away with their own infants, and to sell their young daughters to wealthy men who hope that by raping children they will avoid disease. So he is under no illusions as to the innate refinement of women; but all the more reason to safeguard the purity of those still pure. In such a cause, hypocrisy is surely justified: one must present what ought to be true as if it really is.

“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.